BRASILIA, (Reuters) – Dilma Rousseff, the hand-picked successor of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has an 8-point lead over her main rival ahead of October’s election, a poll showed yesterday, the fourth straight survey showing her ahead.
Rousseff, Lula’s former chief of staff, led former Sao Paulo state Governor Jose Serra by 41 percent to 33 percent, according to a Datafolha survey broadcast on television channel TV Globo.
In the same poll last month, Rousseff trailed Serra by 37 percent to 36 percent.
Three other recent polls showed her ahead by 5 to 10 points.
Since the beginning of the year, Rousseff has overcome Serra’s 20-point lead and surged ahead on the back of a roaring economy and support from the popular Lula.
The Datafolha poll showed former Environment Minister Marina Silva a distant third with 10 percent, the same as her support in July.
Most analysts believe Rousseff is unlikely to lose her lead before the Oct. 3 vote. If no candidate wins more than half the votes in the first round, a runoff will be held on Oct. 31.
Neither Rousseff nor Serra is seen as breaking with the mostly market-friendly policies that helped fuel economic growth and placed Brazil on the global investor radar screen.
Serra favours a strong government hand in Latin America’s biggest economy, while Rousseff wants to strengthen state companies in the oil, energy and banking industries.
The Datafolha survey polled 10,856 people from Monday to Thursday and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
