Brazilian presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s polling lead over incumbent Jair Bolsonaro has narrowed to less than 5 percentage points, according to a new opinion survey published on Thursday by pollster AtlasIntel.
In its first poll since the first-round vote on Oct. 2, AtlasIntel found that 51.1 percent of voters supported Lula, and 46.5 percent backed Bolsonaro.
In the first round of the polarized presidential election, with an initial field of nine candidates, Lula won 48 percent of the votes against 43 percent for Bolsonaro, setting the terrain for an unexpectedly competitive runoff on Oct. 30.
Photo: REUTERS
“The snapshot from this survey shows a more difficult fight for Lula than appeared at first, but with a certain advantage setting in for Lula that will be difficult to overcome,” AtlasIntel CEO Andrei Roman said.
AtlasIntel was one of several polling firms criticized for underestimating support for Bolsonaro in the first round, although it was closer than several more traditional pollsters. AtlasIntel had registered a nine-point lead for Lula ahead of that vote, when in fact the difference was five points.
Thursday’s poll showed that 53.3 percent of Brazilian voters disapprove of Bolsonaro’s performance as president, versus 44.2 percent that approve of his way of governing Brazil, improving significantly from March, when 65 percent disapproved.
Bolsonaro needs to gain 6 million additional votes to win re-election, while Lula needs 1.2 million to get elected in what would be a third term for the former president who served from 2003 to 2010.
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
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