BRASILIA, July 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s disapproval rating passed 50 percent for the first time, according to a poll published by the Datafolha Institute, marking a new low in the far-right leader’s declining popularity.
Bolsonaro’s gap to former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ahead of next year’s elections also increased from 18 to 21 percentage points.
The percentage of people that consider Bolsonaro to be doing a “bad” or “terrible” job increased from 45 percent in May to 51 percent in the poll conducted among more than 2,000 people from July 7-8 and published overnight Thursday to Friday.
Bolsonaro’s approval rating also remained at its lowest mark of 24 percent, set in May.
His highest approval rating of 37 percent came in December 2020.
But his popularity started to plummet from January 2021, when the government stopped handing out subsidies to mitigate the economic crunch caused by the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in the country of 212 million people.
And the fall continued as Brazil entered a second, and more lethal, pandemic wave at the beginning of 2021, followed by corruption allegations surrounding Bolsonaro’s handling of the health crisis, which has claimed the lives of 530,000 Brazilians.
The Datafolha poll found the popular Lula would defeat 66-year-old Bolsonaro by 58 percent to 31 percent in a second round election run-off — another four percent increase on the difference in May.
Bolsonaro is the subject of a senate investigation over his handling of the pandemic, the seriousness of which he repeatedly downplayed.
He’s also being investigated by the public prosecutor for allegedly failing to act on an embezzlement tip off regarding coronavirus vaccine purchases.
