Is the Brazilian presidency race Jair Bolsonaro’s to lose?
New Streetbees survey shows the right-wing candidate is more popular among the electorate than commonly believed
Ahead of Brazil’s presidential elections, we wanted to know what our users — or bees — in the country thought about the different candidates standing, and the state of politics in the country.
The results were surprising — as they showed substantially more support for one candidate than conventional polls suggest. This, we suspect, could mean a stronger result in Sunday’s election than expected…
Bolsonaro is more popular than people think
We found that 34% of our Brazilian bees say they will vote for Bolsonaro in the upcoming elections on Oct 7, a higher number than that suggested in traditional polls.
Rivals Fernando Haddad, leader of the Workers’ Party, and Ciro Gomes of the Democratic Labour Party, polled 14% and 10% respectively in the Streetbees study.
Streetbees also found that Bolsonaro is popular even amongst those who voted for the Workers’ Party previously. Bolsonaro is almost as popular with Workers’ Party voters as their current candidate, Fernando Haddad.
In other polls, Bolsonaro is polling around 28–31%.
What else did we discover?
Streetbees surveyed over 1,500 people in Brazil on their opinions and concerns ahead of the elections. Other findings include:
- The most pressing issue for Brazilians as they prepare to vote is crime and safety (25%), ahead of corruption (20%), unemployment (18%) and education (15%)
- Of those surveyed, 65% said they would leave Brazil if they had the means given the current socio-political situation
- The most popular terms used to describe Bolsonaro were “legend”, “honest” and “crazy”
- “Corrupt” and “puppet” were the most common words used to describe Workers’ Party candidate Haddad
- Out of the vice-presidential candidates, Bolsonaro’s running mate and former army general, Hamilton Mourão is also the most popular (15%). But 43% say they don’t know who their choice would be
Former president Lula, who is barred from running in the elections because of his corruption conviction, would currently be Bolsonaro’s biggest rival if not for the ban. Overall, 1 in 3 Brazilians (32%) say they would vote for him if they could, which would put him on near-equal footing in the polls with the frontrunner.
Nonetheless, Bolsonaro’s promise to crackdown on crime will appeal to much of the Brazilian electorate — 84% agree that there must be a much more hardline approach to criminality.
***
Streetbees can help your business understand markets in real time. Get in touch to find out more.
Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
A quick word on our methodology: The figures in the article were taken in September 2018 from over 1,500 people in Brazil. All of the data was collected by mobile and web surveys, and is accurate to within 2 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
To access the dashboard for this study, click HERE and use the log-in details below:
Username: brazilelections@streetbees.com
Password: analytics
