#Lula #maintains #huge #lead #Bolsonaro #Brazils #presidential #election
A new poll ahead of Brazil’s October presidential election shows former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva retains a comfortable lead over Jair Bolsonaro, but the right-wing incumbent is gaining ground.
Forty-seven percent of people polled by consultancy Datafolha said they would vote for Lula, the 76-year-old leftist leader, in the first round of voting on Oct. 2, the same result as last month’s poll.
That’s a 15-point lead over far-right Bolsonaro (32 percent), which is slightly narrower than last month’s 18-point gap but a significant jump from May’s 21-point lead.
Lula’s strong showing in the poll means there’s a small chance he could ultimately win over 50 percent in the first round to avoid a runoff against 67-year-old Bolsonaro.
When the election goes into a second round on October 30, the poll shows Lula to beat Bolsonaro with 54 percent of the vote.
The two candidates, who are competing in the most polarized presidential race in decades, are well ahead of any third-party challengers – although center-left Ciro Gomes got seven percent in the poll.
Although the two frontrunners had been campaigning for months, the official start was on Tuesday.
Bolsonaro started with a rally in Juiz de Fora, where he was stabbed in 2018, while Lula, a former union leader, chose a car factory in Sao Bernardo do Campo as a symbolic backdrop.
Datafolha said it surveyed 5,744 people in 281 Brazilian cities between last Tuesday and this Thursday, and its results include an error margin of +/- 2 points.
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