SAO PAULO, (Reuters) – Brazil’s leftist presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva maintains the lead over his far-right adversary President Jair Bolsonaro ahead of Sunday’s runoff election, according to two polls today that showed the race is roughly stable.
Lula leads by 52.4% of the votes against 46.0% for Bolsonaro, according to an AtlasIntel poll, inching forward from 52.0% while Bolsonaro slipped from 46.0% in the previous poll three days ago.
A Datafolha poll showed Lula widening his lead slightly to 5 percentage points from 4 points a week earlier, maintaining 49% of voter support as Bolsonaro slipped 1 percentage point to 44%.
Analysts say any sign of stability is good for Lula at this point in the campaign with few days for Bolsonaro to catch him.
The number of undecided voters at this stage of the race, and those who say they will vote blank, is down to just 1.6% of the electorate, according to AtlasIntel.
Excluding the undecided and the blank or annulled votes, Lula would win 53.2% of the valid votes against 46.8% for Bolsonaro, the poll said, compared with 53% and 47% respectively in the AtlasIntel survey three days ago.
Lula won the first-round of the election on Oct. 2 in a field of 11 candidates by 48.43% of the valid votes to 43.20% for Bolsonaro.
Pollsters were widely criticized for significantly underestimating support for Bolsonaro.
AtlasIntel recruits voters online and interviewed 7,500 people between Oct 21-25. The pollster says its survey has a margin of error of 1 percentage point up or down.
Datafolha interviewed 4,580 voters between Oct. 25-27 and its poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
