Former Army Captain Jair Bolsonaro widened his lead in polls published a day before voters cast their ballots in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election.
Bolsonaro would garner 36.7 percent of first-round votes, followed by Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad with 24 percent, according to the MDA/CNT poll. Bolsonaro had 28.2 percent in a previous MDA/CNT poll published on Sept. 30, while Haddad had 25.2 percent. Later on Saturday, surveys from Ibope and Datafolha pollsters also showed Bolsonaro consolidating his lead, with 36 percent of votes in the first round.
If no candidate wins a majority of valid votes on Sunday – which seems the most likely outcome – there will be a runoff on Oct. 28. The latest poll is consistent with other surveys that indicate a runoff between Bolsonaro on the right and Haddad on the left.
Brazil’s stocks, currency and bonds have all surged on bets of greater chances of victory for Bolsonaro, whose top economic adviser backs free markets and small government. Domestic assets outperformed all major peers this week as the conservative lawmaker gained in polls while Haddad stalled after several strong advances.
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bloombergquint.com
While no candidate is expected to win an outright majority - which means the top two finishers will face off in a second-round vote on Oct. 28 - federal congressman Jair Bolsanaro, a far right candidate who has divided the country with his sympathetic comments about Brazil's 20-year military dictatorship, has pulled ahead in recent polls, with some placing his support as high as 44%.
Meaning that after years of leftist rule, followed by a brief period of tepid centrism, a man who has embraced the label "the Brazilian Donald Trump" is poised to win a presidential election, bringing the global populist anti-establishment movement to South America.
Of course, the electorate's embrace of a far-right populist candidate amid a surge of nostalgia for the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil between 1964 and 1985 is no accident. The social ills facing Brazil's 210 million people - who only a few years ago were enjoying a period of relative prosperity - are myriad and diffuse: The unemployment rate has skyrocketed to 12%, a gaping budget shortfall, economic mismanagement and endemic public corruption have shaken the faith of international investors who have left the Brazilian real to plummet. Crime is rampant, with more than 63,000 murders last year, making people yearn for the social stability that was once a hallmark of life in the country. Schools, hospitals and roads are run down and underfunded. Because these and other factors (including his becoming ensnared in a corruption scandal just like his predecessor, Dilma Roussef) Brazilian President Michel Temer is universally despised, with an approval rating of 2%.
The left-wing Workers' Party is responsible for leading the country into an economic death spiral. And the massive "carwash" probe into corruption at state-run energy giant Petrobras, a scandal that led to the ouster of former President Dilma Roussef, has sown widespread resentment directed at the Brazilian left. Former President Lula da Silva, by some measures the most popular politician in the country, was preventing from running under the WP banner due to being imprisoned on corruption charges. Fernando Haddad, who trails Bolsanaro in the polls and will likely face him in the runoff vote, is running in Lula's stead after a court ruled that Lula was ineligible due to a law that he himself signed during his presidency.
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zerohedge.com
