According to a poll issued by the Datafolha Institute, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s disapproval rating has above 50% for the first time, marking a new low in the far-right leader’s decreasing popularity.
Bolsonaro’s lead over former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has grown from 18 to 21 percentage points ahead of next year’s elections.
In a study done among more than 2,000 people from July 7-8 and published overnight Thursday to Friday, the percentage of respondents who think Bolsonaro is doing a “poor” or “awful” job jumped from 45 percent in May to 51 percent.
Bolsonaro’s approval rating remained at 24 percent, the lowest it had been since May.
In December 2020, he received his highest approval rating of 37%.
His popularity began to dwindle in January 2021, when the government stopped providing subsidies to alleviate the economic hardship caused by the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in the 212 million-strong country.
The decline continued in early 2021 when Brazil saw a second, more devastating epidemic, followed by claims of corruption surrounding Bolsonaro’s management of the health catastrophe, which has claimed the lives of 530,000 Brazilians.
Bolsonaro’s support grew from 23 percent in May to 25 percent in election surveys, but it fell short of Lula’s gain from 41 to 46 percent.
Lula, 75, was denied the opportunity to run against Bolsonaro in 2018 because he was serving a 12-year graft term related to the Petrobras corruption scandal.
He was released 18 months later and had his convictions overturned on procedural grounds in March.
In a second-round election run-off, the popular Lula would defeat the 66-year-old Bolsonaro by 58 percent to 31 percent, according to a Datafolha poll, a four percent rise over the gap in May.
However, both men have critics, with Bolsonaro’s personal rejection rating growing from 54 to 59 percent and Lula’s climbing from 36 to 37 percent.
Bolsonaro is under investigation by the Senate for his management of the outbreak, which he has frequently minimized.
The public prosecutor is also looking into him for allegedly failing to act on an embezzlement tip about coronavirus vaccination procurement.
The opposition is seeking for Bolsonaro to be impeached by the president of the Chamber of Deputies.
