It was a bewildered Brazil that woke up on the morning of Monday, October 3. The day before, the first round of the presidential election had led to an unexpected result, which no polling institute had been able to predict: the outgoing far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, obtaining 43.2% of the vote, hot on the heels of the favorite of the ballot and leader of the left, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, came out on top with 48.43% of the vote.
Despite a cataclysmic mandate, marked by the return of hunger, wild deforestation and the tragedy of Covid-19, the outgoing head of state has defied all predictions and achieved an unexpected performance. The latest survey by the Datafolha institute, considered the most reliable in the country, gave on the eve of the first round the leader of the Workers’ Party (PT) victorious with 50% of the vote against 36% for Jair Bolsonaro.
The leader of the extreme right will have ceded very little ground to the left. Its 2022 score is more or less the same as in 2018 (46% at the time). Jair Bolsonaro is in the lead in half of the states of the federation, including some of the most important. He obtained 51% of the votes in Rio de Janeiro and in the Federal District of Brasilia. In the state of Sao Paulo, the most populous in Brazil, he has a comfortable lead of 7 points over Lula with 47% of the vote.
Therefore, a question burns the lips: how could the pollsters have so underestimated the vote in favor of the far right? “The problem does not come from the methodology”insists political scientist Mayra Goulart, who first points to a “lack of data”. The last census of the Brazilian population dates from 2010 and its update, now in progress, has been delayed due to the pandemic. “The models of the institutes are poorly calibrated and have not integrated the exponential increase in the evangelical population, the very large majority favorable to Jair Bolsonaro”underlines the researcher.
Rifts of the Lula Campaign
Added to this is the very attitude of some far-right voters. For several months, Jair Bolsonaro has constantly cast opprobrium on polling institutes, qualified as “liars”. On September 20, an employee of the Datafolha institute, hated by the government, was insulted, attacked and beaten by two supporters of the president in Ariranha, a small town in the interior of the state of Sao Paulo.
“The bankruptcy of the polls is also the result of sabotage, organized at the top of the state”, insists Mathias Alencastro, researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning. For months, the far-right power has indeed encouraged its supporters not to respond to opinion polls. « [Il ne faut] answer any of them by the end of the election! ! ! »wrote in capital letters on Twitter Ciro Nogueira, Minister of Casa Civil (sort of super-chief of staff) of Jair Bolsonaro.
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