The recovery in approval of the Lula government, which was recorded between the two most recent Datafolha polls, has stalled in the new poll conducted by the institute. 32% of participants consider management to be good or excellent, while 37% consider it bad or terrible, and 30% see it as normal.
In the previous round, the approval rate was 33%, opposition was 38%, and approval was 28%. Given the margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points, there is stability in the scenario.
At that moment, at the beginning of September, the picture was even more encouraging for Planalto, with excellent/good up four points compared to the previous poll in July. Datafolha interviewed 2,002 voters in 113 cities across the country from Tuesday (2) to Thursday (4).
What has changed since then? In the previous poll, Lula appeared to be riding the wave of the resumption of ever-worsening polarization.
The polar opposite symbol of the Workers’ Party member, Jair Bolsonaro (PL), was already under house arrest and will be sentenced by the Federal Supreme Court just two days after the end of the fieldwork conducted by Datafolha researchers.
At the international level, the dispute continued to rage between Lula and Donald Trump, the US president who mixed Bolsonaro’s defense with his trade war by imposing additional import duties on Brazil.
On September 7, the day before we began collecting questionnaires for this research, a Workers’ Party member saw a giant American flag raised on Avenida Paulista, which angered some Bolsonaro leaders because it was so embarrassing.
That wave spread, without major effects, from there to here. On October 26, Lula met with Trump in Malaysia, beginning a rapprochement that has already seen the lifting of some tariffs on Brazilian products and a move toward normalization, depending on a possible US attack on Venezuela.
Bolsonaro was arrested for violating his electronic ankle bracelet on November 22. Three days later, the Supreme Court announced his final sentence of 27 years and three months in prison on charges of attempting a coup in 2022.
Having already retired from the National Front in Brasilia, Bolsonaro has begun to bleed his political capital, with debate over who will be his political group’s candidate – his son, Senator Flavio, said his father nominated him, perhaps to end up as vice president of Tarcisio de Freitas (Republicanos-SP) or split the oath once and for all.
In the opposite direction, Lula has seen his problems become more common and out of popular concern, in this case with the series of defeats imposed on the government in Congress – especially in the Senate, where the crisis has been open since the PT member appointed Attorney General Jorge Mesías and not Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), the former president of the Chamber of Deputies and who is patronized by the current president, Davi Alcolombre (União Brasil-AP).
During this period, the PT member also achieved a victory, namely income tax exemption for those who earn up to R $ 5,000, and they even appeared on television to beat the bass drum last Sunday (30).
Its electoral potential is not yet clear. In the range most directly affected by this measure, those earning between 2 and 5 minimum wages, Lula saw a four-point increase in this poll in his approval, something within the margin of error for a given segment.
When asked to evaluate the president’s personal work, stability remains the same, although better than when the subject is his government. Among the total sample, 49% approve of Lula, compared to 48% in the previous poll, and the other half disapprove of him: the same percentage as 48% in the September poll.
Finally, another event that had a great impact in that period was the deadly operation carried out by the Rio police last month, which forced Lula to hesitate to use rhetorical statements given the difficulty the left faces in dealing with this issue. The right’s subsequent failure to debate Congress may have negated this, but it is the speculation that belies the usual lack of interest in what happens in Parliament.
In general, Datafolha noted the maintenance of presidential approval files, which generally track electoral preferences. People aged 60 or older (40%), the less educated (44%), people from the Northeast (43%), and Catholics (40%) consider their government to be excellent and above the national average.
Likewise, groups with a higher percentage of Bolsonarianism and/or anti-PTS disapprove of it more: 46% of those with higher education, 53% of those earning 5 to 10 minimum wages, Southerners (45%) and Evangelicals (49%).
However, the scenario was worse for the Labor MP. At the beginning of the year he was under pressure due to the political climate and issues such as the Pécs crisis. From 35% excellent/good in December 2024, it fell to 24% in February, the worst rate ever during his three terms at the helm of Planalto.
Now it boasts paltry numbers compared to its performance in the other two governments, from 2003 to 2010. In the second, it received 72% approval and 6% dissent at that time, for example. But he outperforms his rival Bolsonaro, who at this stage of 2021, turbulent due to the pandemic and even the military crisis, has scored 53% bad/terrible and 22% excellent/good.