Brazil president and Workers’ Party (PT) presidential candidate Dilma Rousseff reacts during a news conference at the Alvorada Palace in Brasilia yesterday.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has clawed back support at the expense of her main opponent in next month’s presidential election, a poll showed yesterday, suggesting the runoff that should decide the vote is too close to call.
Marina Silva surged in the polls after joining the race on the death of her party’s original candidate last month, and she appeared poised to unseat Rousseff with a 10 percentage-point margin in the likely second round vote.
But Rousseff has since recovered ground, aided by a TV campaign that has questioned Silva’s ability to govern Latin America’s largest nation and portrayed her pro-market policies as favouring the rich and hurting the poor.
Yesterday’s Datafolha survey showed that, in a simulation of the likely runoff, the gap between them had narrowed to two points – 46% for Silva and 44% for Rousseff.
That is equivalent to the poll’s margin of error.
Rousseff widened her lead over Silva in the first-round vote to seven points, raising her support to 37% from 36% in the previous poll, while Silva fell to 30% from 33%.
Centrist candidate Aecio Neves, the market favourite, has risen to 17% from 15%.
If no candidate wins a majority in the October 5 election, the race will be decided in a runoff three weeks later between the two top vote-getters.
Rousseff has promised to expand social programmes that are widely acknowledged to have reduced poverty and inequality during 12 years of Workers’ Party rule. But the left-leaning economist’s policies of intervention in the economy have also drawn harsh criticism from investors.
Silva, an environmental activist turned anti-corruption campaigner, wants to break with Brazil’s murky coalition politics to restore trust in government, a popular stance in a country where many voters are fed up with traditional parties.
The poll numbers suggest that Rousseff has not been hurt by a new bribery scandal involving state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, which could derail her re-election bid if it snowballs.
A jailed former Petrobras executive, Paulo Costa, has named two dozen Rousseff allies, including her energy minister, for allegedly receiving kickbacks on contracts, according to a plea bargain statement leaked to local media.
In a new leak on Thursday, TV Globo reported that Costa told federal prosecutors that bribes were paid in the purchase by Petrobras of a refinery in Pasadena, Texas, and that he himself received 1.5mn reais ($634,000).
Dubbed the “ticking time-bomb” because of what he might reveal, Costa remained silent when summoned on Wednesday by a Congressional inquiry into the refinery deal. The new poll surveyed 5,362 voters on September 17-18.
