Brazil: Lula maintains a clear lead just before the second round of the presidential election

Luis Inacio Lula da Silva is again credited with a six-point lead over Jair Bolsonaro in voting intentions ahead of the second round of the presidential election in Brazil on Sunday.

According to the latest poll by the reporting institute Datafolha released on Thursday, he has 53% to 47% of potentially valid votes.

Last week, the margin had closed to just four points (52%-48%) in view of the confrontation between the center-left former president and the far-right incumbent, according to a poll by this institute.

Yesterday, the two candidates recorded exactly the same performances as in the first two polls between the two rounds (October 7/14).

THE Zach Bolsonaro he recently said he would accept a relegation defeat “if nothing unnatural happens,” although he has repeatedly questioned whether Brazil’s electronic voting system is foolproof, without providing any evidence for his claims.

In yesterday’s poll, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva he once again appeared to be the candidate preferred by women (52%), poorer Brazilians (61%) and Catholics (55%).

Jáich Bolsonaro, on the other hand, is preferred by most among the evangelicals (62%) and the richest (59%).

The survey by the Datafolia institute was conducted in 252 cities with a representative sample of 4,580 voters from Tuesday to last Thursday and has a margin of statistical error of ±2%.

According to another survey, by the AtlasIntel institute, Lula leads with 52.4% against Mr. Bolsonaro’s 46%. According to this survey, which was conducted on a sample of 7,500 voters from October 21 to 25 and has a margin of statistical error of ±1%, the percentage of undecideds is just 1.6%.

Two days before the end of the election campaign, opponents were still struggling to convince (at least some of) the latter. Their final pre-election debate will be broadcast tonight by Globo, the country’s highest-rated television station, and it is possible that it could prove decisive in this regard.

The campaign, the most polarizing in decades, was extremely foul-mouthed, with a lot of backlash from both sides — there were accusations of cannibalism, pedophilia, Satanism, corruption… — and with social networking sites networks to become hotbeds of misinformation and fake news.

Lula won the first round securing 48% of the vote, compared to 43% for the far-right former captain. The outgoing president’s percentage was much higher than the polling institutes gave him credit for, which called into question their credibility and tarnished his image, which the head of state and his supporters have not stopped emphasizing.