Former President Lula da Silva is now so popular that he may be able to defeat incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in the first round of the Brazilian election this autumn, according to the latest poll from the Datafolha Institute.
Lula is at 48 percent support, compared to Bolsonaro’s 27 percent, a margin that has thus increased to 21 percentage points – seen as an enormous amount in this context.
And if you exclude, among other things, probable blank votes, it looks even brighter for the Social Democrat Lula, who previously ruled Latin America’s largest country 2003–2010: then the 76-year-old is at 54 percent against 67-year-old Bolsonaros 30 percent.
A number of other candidates are also running in the presidential election, but currently have negligible support. The election will be held on October 2, and if no one reaches 50 percent, a second round will be held on October 30.
But now Lula seems to have a chance to win immediately. In that case, it will be an astonishing return, after he was thrown in jail just a few years ago. The accusations of corruption that convicted him are considered by many to have been politically motivated.
Datafolha’s survey indicates a margin of error of 2 percentage points.