What did the polls portend for the elections in Brazil?
Lula da Silva obtained 48% of the votes, compared to the 50% and 51% expected in the days before the elections, respectively Datafolha and ipec, two pollsters with a recognized track record in Brazil. Thus, their forecasts were correct within the margin of error for the leftist ex-president and, even, those of weeks ago.
But what they did not know how to anticipate was the success that the Bolsonarism: With 99% of the polls counted, the president won 43% of the votes, compared to a maximum of 37% attributed to him by the polls throughout the electoral campaign.
Two other allies of the president upset the forecasts: the governor of Rio de Janeiro, Claudio Castrowho was re-elected in the first round with more than 58% (after scoring 44% and 47% in the polls) and the candidate for the government of Saint Paul Tarcisio de Freitas which went to the ballot after obtaining 42% of the votes, ten points above the 31% predicted in the polls.
“The polls do not make forecasts, they are like a photo (of the moment), not a movie. But the latest polls on Friday and Saturday show that there were big mistakesnot only in the presidential election, but also in the election of senators and governors,” Leandro Gabiati, director of the Dominium consulting firm in Brasilia, told AFP.
Why were the polls about Jair Bolsonaro so wrong?
This question dominated the discussions on Monday in Brazil. Although conclusions may take some time, analysts consider a set of reasons, ranging from potential survey design issues when capturing the intention of certain sectors by movement of undecided votes at the last moment.
“Was there migration of useful vote (from other candidates like Simone Tebbet Y Cyrus Gomes, third and fourth in the first round)?, a volatility of the votes at the last moment? Since the polls were so far from reality, now we do not know if in fact Jair Bolsonaro grew up or if he already had that support” and escaped the polls, says Gabiati.
For the political scientist Mayra Goulart, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, there is a “information blackout in Brazil” due to the two-year delay of the demographic census, which was postponed from 2020 to 2022 due to the pandemic. This affects the precision of the sample, especially in segments such as the evangelicalwhich represents 30% of Brazilians and is “a popular sector capable of giving votes to the extreme right”, points out .
“It is likely that the 2022 census will help correct some of these inconsistencies for future elections,” agrees Guilherme Casarões, a political scientist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.
How will this affect the ballot in Brazil?
“The opinion consultants will have to deal with this. It will affect the analysis of journalists and experts“, told AFP Leonardo Paz, consultant for Brazil of the analysis center International Crisis Group.
These discrepancies represent a “big problem for the institutes and for democracy itself,” agrees Gabiati. “The polls are an important part of the electoral process and it is bad for democracy that this actor is so questioned“, he maintains.
President Jair Bolsonaro will reinforce his speech that what matters is the temperature of the streets, which he nicknames “DataPueblo” and that “victory is assured because the polls do not reflect reality”, predicts the expert. He will say “that the pollsters work for the opposition and that the big media that hire them act biased“.
Goulart also warns of the risk that criticism of the polls will turn into a generalized denial discourse. “Placing electoral polls in check in a context of far right populism it is also putting science and reliable sources of information, including the media, in check,” he warns.
Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the president, announced on Monday that he will collect signatures to open a parliamentary commission to investigate opinion polling companies for their errors. And Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, Cyrus Nogueiraeven asked his followers to ignore the pollsters.
“After the scandal they committed, all the voters of the president of Bolsonaro only have one answer to the pollsters: not to answer any until the end of the election!” The chief minister of the Civil House wrote on his Twitter account.
Source: Ambito
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