Two new polls released yesterday, October 12, in Brazil by Ibope and Vox Populi show Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva widening his advantage in the presidential runoff against his opponent, former São Paulo governor Geraldo Alckmin.
Ibope (Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics, the grandfather of all Brazilian polling institutes) shows Lula with 57% of vote intentions against 43% for Alckmin when just the valid votes are computed.
The Vox Populi Institute has similar results: Lula appears with 55% of the votes while his opponent gets 45%. So, Ibope gives the president a 14% advantage while Vox Populi puts it at 10%.
The Ibope survey, the first one by the Institute, since the October 1st election, also wanted to know from voters their opinion on the Lula administration.
45% of them classified the government as good or very good, 35% called it regular and 20% consider it bad or very bad. A total of 3.010 voters were interviewed, between October 10 and 12, in 199 Brazilian cities.
The Vox Populi survey, commissioned by the magazine Carta Capital, interviewed 2,000 voters across the country on Monday and Tuesday. , Their results have a margin of error of 2.2%.
On October 11, DataFolha, still another polling firm, had shown a 12-point difference in favor of Lula. The DataFolha polls heard 2.868 voters from 25 States.
President Lula almost won reelection in the first round on October 1st. He won 46,662,365 votes (48,61%) and Alckmin 39.968.369 (41,64%). To win a candidate needs at least 50% of the votes plus one.
Brazilians go back to the polls on October 29, a Sunday. The second round will also serve to determine the winner in several gubernatorial races.