The former president and favorite candidate for the presidency of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da SIlva continues as the favorite for the October elections and reduced the differences between the evangelist electoratein which President Jair Bolsonaro dominates the preferences for his re-election, according to a survey by the Datafolha demographic institute released this Thursday by the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.
According to the institute’s survey Datasheet released this Thursday night, Lula has 45 percent voting intention against 33 for the far-right Bolsonaro for the electionsfollowed with nine percent, the representative of the Democratic Labor Party, Ciro Gomes, and lastly, Senator Simone Tebet for the Brazilian Democratic Movement party with four percent.
The results of the survey, considered the most reliable in the country, indicated that for In a possible second round, the former trade unionist who governed Brazil between 2003 and 2010 would have 54 percent of the voting intentions, one point above the previous poll, compared to the 38 points that Bolsonaro maintained.
The data also indicates that Lula has a higher intention to vote than the other candidates put together, which would give him more than half of the valid votes. In other words, if the statistics are confirmed, he can be elected in the first round and without the need for a ballot. In Brazil, the election wins without the need for a ballot, the candidate who in the first round has 50 percent plus one of the valid votes.
The religious vow
The Evangelical electorate represents 30 percent of the electoral roll for the October 2 elections and is considered key for being the support of Bolsonarism among the most conservative popular groups. According to the Datafolha survey, Lula reduced from 23 to 17 points the difference that Bolsonaro had in the evangelical segment.
Bolsonaro, for his part, had a 51 percent preference at the beginning of September and fell this week to 49 percent.while the support of Protestant Christians for Brazilian cults rose from 28 to 32 percent.
Last Friday, together with his running mate, Geraldo Alckmin, Lula held an event called “Evangelicals with Lula and Alckmin” in Sao Goncalo, a municipality neighboring Rio de Janeiro.. The meeting was of great magnitude and was attended by evangelical pastors who support the candidacy of the leader of the Workers’ Party (PT) and reject the president.
Secondly, the far-right president is investing in the customs agenda as he did in 2018 to try to capture the loyalty of the most conservative religious electorate by accusing the PT in its electoral propaganda of being in favor of abortion, the liberation of drugs and what he calls gender ideology.
Bolsonaro also has the official support of several neo-Pentecostal media religious leaders who respond to the Assembly of God, the Universal Church (owner of the second air channel, the official Record) and other cults with great adherence in the favelas (neighbourhoods). emergency) and small towns. In this scenario, Bolsonaro’s wife occupies a key place. An evangelical fanatic to the point of commenting that she has visions to connect God with the president in the Alvorada Palace, the presidential residence, the first lady Michelle Bolsonaro is relevant in the acts, praying before the public and maintaining that her husband is an envoy to save the country from communism.
fight with the poor
The former president and candidate for the PT maintains a wide advantage within the group of voters with incomes of up to 400 dollars, but reduced the preference from 54 to 52 percent, while Bolsonaro advanced from 26 to 27 percent in this public.which represents almost half of the neighboring country.
According to the Datafolha survey, Lula dominates the northeast region, the poorest in the country, and leads in the most populous and richest state with 46 million inhabitants, São Paulo, in the second most populous, Minas Gerais, and the third, Rio de Janeiro. , all in the southeast region.
Governors Poll
For governor, the PT candidate Fernando Haddad is the favorite to win in São Paulo, although he would go to a second round with the Bolsonarist Tarcisio Freitas or the current governor, Rodrigo García, of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB).
In Minas Gerais, Bolsonaro governor Romeu Zema, of the libertarian Partido Novo, has a chance of being re-elected in the first round against Lulista Alexandre Kalil, mayor of Belo Horizonte. Since 1989, all the winners of the presidency have also won in Minas Gerais.
For his part, in Rio de Janeiro, the Bolsonarista governor Claudio Castro leads, but according to Datafolha he should compete against Marcelo Freixo, of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), Lula’s candidate.
Bolsonaro against the polls
The far-right president is in charge of discrediting the Datafolha polls in his meetings. “Here is not the lying Datafolha. Here is our Datapueblo,” he told a crowd of supporters in Brasilia last week, a speech echoed by many of his most ardent supporters.
Datafolha affirms that their pollsters have been increasingly harassed when doing their work in various regions of the country.. At least 10 pollsters (out of a total of 470) who work for the polling firm Datafolha were attacked this Tuesday the 13th in different parts of the country, amid an escalation of violence by Bolsonaro militants, according to Folha.
The cases occurred in the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Alagoas, Maranhão, Goiás, Pará, Río Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. According to the company’s version, the people who seek to intimidate the investigators, in most cases, declare themselves as Bolsonaristas or cite the name of President Jair Bolsonaro.
The general director of Datafolha, Luciana Chong, reported that the attackers accuse the institute of being communist and in some cases tried to film the interviewers to intimidate them. This Wednesday, for example, a woman was filmed and exposed on social networks by a man who accused her of not wanting to interview him because she is a follower of Bolsonaro. “If you say you support Bolsonaro, she runs… look how she ran, see the lie, the farce,” said the man, as he chased the pollster down the street.
Chong explained to the news agency AFP that not accepting interviews from people who offer to answer the questionnaire is one of the main rules to guarantee that the surveys are not biased. “The approach must be random, within the parameters defined when constructing the sample so that it is representative, such as city, neighborhood, age and gender of the interviewees”he explained.