SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Ruling party candidate Dilma Rousseff holds a lead of 7 percentage points over the opposition’s Jose Serra ahead of Brazil’s Oct. 31 presidential run-off election, a poll released yesterday showed.
The Datafolha poll indicated that Serra, a former Sao Paulo state governor, had picked up support since the first-round vote last Sunday, but not quite as much as expected.
The poll, published by Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, showed Rousseff, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s former chief of staff and hand-picked successor, with 48 per cent support compared to 41 per cent for Serra. Eleven per cent of respondents said they would vote for neither candidate or were undecided.
Excluding those poll respondents who did not choose either of the two candidates — as will be the case in the election — Rousseff had 54 per cent and Serra 46 per cent.
The poll is the first released since the Oct. 3 first-round vote in which Rousseff won 47 per cent of the vote and Serra 33 per cent. Because no candidate topped 50 per cent of the valid votes cast, the election goes to the runoff in three weeks.
Sources within Serra’s Brazilian Social Democracy Party and Rousseff’s Workers’ Party had told Reuters in recent days they expected her lead could be as narrow as 5 percentage points.
