Fascistic candidate Bolsonaro widens lead in Brazilian polls

 

Fascistic candidate Bolsonaro widens lead in Brazilian polls

By
Miguel Andrade

17 October 2018

A week and a half after the stunning first round of Brazil’s presidential elections, which nearly delivered an outright victory to the fascistic demagogue Jair Bolsonaro, who won 46 percent of the votes, polls are indicating he may get up to 60 percent in the October 28 run-off. He is currently polling a 20 percent lead over Workers Party (PT) candidate Fernando Haddad, who won 29 percent of the votes in the first round and now polls at 40 percent.

Given the crisis-ridden and frenzied character of this year’s Brazilian electoral process, however, a surprise win by Haddad cannot be discounted, especially given that Bolsonaro was polling only 30 percent barely a week before the first round of balloting.

However shocking, Bolsonaro’s lead was consistent with congressional election results. His Social Liberal Party (PSL) went from only one representative elected in 2014 to 52 elected on October 7, only four short of the PT. The PT’s former allies in the Brazilian Democratic Movement—the party of President Michel Temer, who took office after PT President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016—and the former right-wing opposition, the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) each saw their caucuses cut in half. The PT also lost 20 percent of its seats in the 513-member House, with analogous results for each of these parties in the Brazilian Senate.

The breakdown of the vote leaves no doubt that the elections amounted to a referendum on the 14 years of PT rule, which culminated in the Rousseff impeachment and the right-wing Temer administration.

Bolsonaro won by at least 25 percentage points, and in some cases 40 points, over Haddad in every major industrial region and former…

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