BRASïLIA: Incumbent Dilma Rousseff has closed the gap on rival Marina Silva, with the pair running almost neck and neck ahead of next month's presidential elections, a new poll showed Tuesday.
The poll by the National Transport Confederation (CNT), which carries out polling in parallel with the main polling institutions, showed Silva edging out Rousseff by 45.5 percent to 42.7 percent in an October 26 run-off.
That means the pair are locked in a technical dead heat, given the 2.2 percent margin of error for the sample of 2,002 voters in a poll carried out between September 5 and 7.
Previous polls had indicated a larger lead of as much as ten percent for Silva, an ecologist who was born to poor Amazon rubber tappers.
In the first round of voting on October 5, Workers Party (PT) candidate Rousseff would receive 38.1 percent, up from 34.2 two weeks ago, compared with 33.5 percent for Silva, up from 28.2, the CNT sample shows.
Third-placed social democrat Aecio Neves was trailing at 14.7 percent, down from 16 percent in August.
It was only in mid-August that Silva, who secured almost 20 percent and 20 million votes to come third as the green candidate in 2010, entered the race as a replacement for Socialist candidate Eduardo Campos, who was killed in an air crash.
"The poll shows a rise in voter intentions for Dilma Rousseff, a consequence of an improvement in (voters') assessment of the government and of her electoral program," which gets twice as much air time as those of her rivals, the CNT indicated.
The CNT poll coincided with weekend revelations by a former director of state oil giant Petrobras alleging kickbacks to a swath of politicians, predominantly from the ruling coalition.
Batista said he believed the Petrobras scandal had broken too late for it to have a major impact on latest polling.
Voter satisfaction with 66-year-old Rousseff, a guerrilla during the 1964-85 military dictatorship who replaced two-term PT president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2011, rose four percent from August to 37.5 percent.
"Marina Silva enjoyed giddy growth in the last poll, taking support amid the general commotion which followed (Campos') plane crash," said CNT director Bruno Batista.
"Today, we are seeing support for Marina Silva still on the rise, albeit at a slower rate," he added.
Polls since she entered the race show Silva, who served as environment minister under Lula as well as a senator, receiving backing from undecided electors who have "started to see in Marina a possible third way" candidate between Rousseff and the more pro-market approach of Neves.
Comments
Comments are closed.