Dilma enters Sunday's polls stronger than the PT.
What seemed unthinkable at the beginning of the year is becoming a reality in the final stretch of the election; President Dilma Rousseff leads in all regions of the country, according to a Datafolha poll, despite weak performances by her party's gubernatorial candidates; the most striking situation is in the São Paulo-Rio de Janeiro axis, where Alexandre Padilha and Lindbergh Farias are languishing in third and fourth place, while Dilma is gaining ground; the results of Sunday's October 5th elections could grant Dilma new powers over her own party.
247 – With or without a decision on the election next Sunday, October 5th – whether in the case of a first-round victory for President Dilma Rousseff, which, according to projections, could happen, or her advancing to the second round with nearly a 70% chance of being elected, according to the international consultancy Eurasia – at least one important political fact is already known: the PT candidate seeking re-election has become bigger than the PT itself.
The current situation, with Dilma leading in the polls in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, while the party's gubernatorial candidates languish in a disappointing third and fourth place respectively, is a stark reflection of the growing strength of the president. Both former minister Alexandre Padilha and Senator Lindbergh Farias should, in principle, be drawing votes for Dilma. But in practice, the theory is quite different.
It was believed, especially regarding the São Paulo election, that Padilha could repeat the performance of the current mayor Fernando Haddad and, as a newcomer to the race, excite the electorate. But that is not what we are seeing in all the surveys, so far, conducted by institutes such as Datafolha and Ibope.
Instead of Padilha, anointed by former president Lula, being the vote-getter for Dilma, it is her rise in the polls that has led the candidate, five days before the end of the contest, to finally surpass the 10% mark in the Datafolha poll.
In Rio, the president never hid her discomfort with Lindbergh's candidacy. The senator needed to shield himself behind Lula to secure his place in the race. Despite all the behind-the-scenes maneuvering, he did not obtain the president's endorsement and never gained traction in popular opinion polls. From third place throughout the election, he now finds himself in a useless fourth position in the polls, overtaken by Governor Pezão, who has risen to the top. In this particular case, Dilma emerges doubly victorious. If the governor confirms the positive predictions, Dilma can celebrate his victory, because she has never failed to explicitly support Pezão. The electorate of Rio de Janeiro, on the other hand, remains, according to recent polls, much more aligned with Dilma than with Marina Silva of the PSB and Aécio Neves of the PSDB.
Former Development Minister Fernando Pimentel, who has had the president's support from the very beginning, has led the Workers' Party (PT) to the top of the polls since the start of the campaign. But less due to party guidelines, and more due to his chosen personal strategy of not directly confronting the PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party), Pimentel is performing well. Alongside him, Dilma has visited Minas Gerais, her birthplace, more than a dozen times in recent weeks. The result, so far, is a strong lead for Pimentel, a result in which it will be impossible to separate him from the president's support.
Dilma has more voting intentions in Paraná, according to polls from the largest institutes, than former minister Gleise Hoffman, who is in third place in the race. She is also doing better than Rui Costa, the candidate of the Workers' Party governor Jaques Wagner for his succession. Despite having grown in recent days, his candidacy has not been able to trouble that of former governor Paulo Souto, of the DEM party. Dilma, however, has never had a weak position in the polls in the state.
Leading in the Datafolha poll released on Tuesday, September 30th, across all regions of the country, in practice Dilma has had, until now, the electoral clout to push forward the party's candidates. And even experienced figures understood that strengthening ties with the candidate has become an excellent electoral strategy.
"Our strategy now is to associate my image as closely as possible with that of President Dilma," said Governor Tarso Genro of Rio Grande do Sul to 247. He is entering the final stretch in a technical tie with Senator Ana Amélia Lemos, of the PP-PSDB coalition, having already turned the tide in the capital, Porto Alegre.
The president entered the race amidst hushed questions, even within her own party. But she arrives at the decisive moment with her name being touted as a hopeless candidate, having withstood the heaviest barrage of attacks suffered by a presidential candidate since the country's redemocratization. With her performance so far, even if she doesn't decide the election in this first round, Dilma is stronger than at the beginning of the race – stronger even than the PT (Workers' Party).