SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva maintains a 13-percentage-point lead over President Jair Bolsonaro, but the far-right incumbent has narrowed his leftist rival’s advantage ahead of the October election, according to a poll published on Thursday.
The survey by Datafolha showed Lula with 45% of voter support against 32% for Bolsonaro in the first round of the election schedule for Oct. 2, compared to 47% and 32% respectively in the previous poll.
In an expected second-round run-off, Lula would get elected by 53% of the votes versus 38% for Bolsonaro, a 15 percentage point gap, down from 17 two weeks ago, the poll showed.
Datafolha interviewed 5,734 people in person between August 30 and Sept. 1. The poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points up or down.
(Reporting by Peter Frontini and Anthony Boadle; Editing by Sandra Maler)