Datafolha shows that 95% of Lula's voters are already completely certain of their vote.
Polls confirmed former president's lead.
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) continues to lead the second round of the presidential race with 49% of voting intentions, while President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) remains at 44%, according to a Datafolha poll released this Friday, indicating a stable scenario two weeks before the final vote.
Blank and null votes total 5%, compared to 6% in the previous poll, and those who responded that they don't know or didn't want to answer are at 1%, compared to 2% in the previous survey. The margin of error for the poll is 2 percentage points.
Considering only valid votes, excluding blank, null, and undecided votes, Lula has 53% against Bolsonaro's 47%, the same percentages verified by the institute a week ago. In the first round, Lula finished ahead with 48,43% of the valid votes, against Bolsonaro's 43,20%.
The Datafolha poll released this Friday was conducted during a week of intensified campaign events for both candidates in different cities across the country, and may already reflect the potential effects of the radio and television election advertising, which resumed last Friday.
The candidates' rejection rates also remained stable, registering the same percentages as on October 7th: 51% of those interviewed would not vote for Bolsonaro under any circumstances, and 46% would not vote for Lula under any circumstances.
The survey indicated that the vast majority of voters have already decided on their vote, 93%, the same percentage recorded a week ago, while the level of those who say their vote could still change fluctuated from 7% last week to 6%, further narrowing the target audience for the campaigns in these next two weeks.
The level of conviction regarding voting is even higher among those who have already declared their vote for one of the candidates. Among those who will vote for Lula, 95% say they are completely certain of their vote. Of those who declared their vote for Bolsonaro, 94% responded that they are totally decided.
The survey also captured the movement of voters for Senator Simone Tebet (MDB), who came in third in the first round with 4,16% of the valid votes. She declared her support for Lula and has been intensely involved in the campaign, including in radio and television campaign ads. Among the former candidate's voters, 41% will vote for Lula and 29% will vote for Bolsonaro, while 22% said they will not vote for anyone.
Among voters who supported Ciro Gomes (PDT), who came in fourth in the first round with 3,04% of the valid votes, 40% say they will vote for Lula and 31% for Bolsonaro, with 24% opting for neither.
Both Simone and Ciro declared their support for Lula in this second round, but the PDT presidential candidate's declaration of support was much less emphatic than the senator's. He stated in a video, without mentioning Lula's name, that he would accept the PDT's decision to support the Workers' Party candidate.
Datafolha also surveyed government approval ratings. The percentage of those who rate the administration as excellent or good rose one percentage point to 38%, while 39% rate it as bad or terrible, compared to 40% in the previous survey. Those who consider the government to be average remained at 22%.
Datafolha interviewed 2.898 people between Thursday and Friday of this week.
INVESTIGATIONS
After the official results of the first round, the polling institutes were criticized, especially for underestimating Bolsonaro's numbers in the first vote.
The Minister of Justice, Anderson Torres, ordered the Federal Police to open an investigation against the institutes, and the president of the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (Cade) ordered the agency's General Superintendence to investigate the institutes.
The investigations were annulled, however, by the president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Alexandre de Moraes, on the grounds that they were usurping the Electoral Court's investigative powers and were intended to please Bolsonaro, which could also constitute misuse of power.
There was also movement among parliamentarians with the intention of creating a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI), and legislative proposals were suggested to regulate the activity of the institutes, one of them presented by the government leader in the Chamber, Ricardo Barros (PP-PR).
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