(Reuters) – Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has recovered support and is running neck-and-neck with environmentalist Marina Silva in a likely second-round runoff in the October election, a poll published on Wednesday showed.
Credit: Reuters/Bruno Santos (L) and Ueslei Marcelino (R)
Silva has 42 percent of voter support in a second-round vote, one percentage point ahead of Rousseff, according to the survey by polling firm Vox Populi. The poll was commissioned by weekly news magazine Carta Capital and published on its website.
It was the first Vox Populi poll since Silva joined the presidential race nearly one month ago following the death of her party’s previous candidate, Eduardo Campos, so it did not provide comparative figures with previous surveys.
Other recent polls by larger opinion research institutes have shown Rousseff narrowing the gap with Silva in a runoff, which will take place on Oct. 26 if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the votes in the first round of voting on Oct. 5. But those polls have shown Silva winning the election in a runoff.
In the first round, Rousseff would get 36 percent of the vote, Silva 28 percent and centrist opposition candidate Aecio Neves 15 percent, according to the Vox Populi poll.
A separate survey by the Datafolha institute, which political analysts watch more closely because it conducts polls more frequently than Vox Populi, is scheduled for release later on Wednesday.
The Vox Populi poll surveyed 2,000 voters on Monday and Tuesday. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.
(Writing by Silvio Cascione; Editing by Todd Benson and Lisa Von Ahn)