SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilians’ disapproval of the way President Jair Bolsonaro handled the COVID-19 crisis has hit a record high and he could face a tough campaign for reelection next year, according to new polls, while Brazil faces the worst pandemic increase yet.
A Datafolha survey, released on Tuesday night, showed that 54% of Brazilians consider the way Bolsonaro dealt with the crisis as bad or terrible. A separate PoderData survey showed that two leftist rivals could beat Bolsonaro in a runoff in October 2022.
Support for Bolsonaro has waned as Brazil faces a brutal second wave of coronavirus cases, with a record 2,841 24-hour deaths reported on Tuesday and a record 90,303 new confirmed infections reported on Wednesday.
The president’s prospects have also diminished since his political rival, ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, had his corruption convictions overturned this month by the Supreme Court, allowing him to run in the 2022 election.
Lula and former left-wing parliamentarian Ciro Gomes would have more support than Bolsonaro in a hypothetical second round vote, according to the PoderData poll, which showed the two 5 percentage points ahead of Bolsonaro in mock clashes.
In 2018, Bolsonaro beat Fernando Haddad, the candidate of the Workers’ Party handpicked by Lula, by 55% to 45% in the second round.
The Datafolha poll of 2,023 people, conducted this week, showed an even greater drop in confidence in Bolsonaro in relation to the pandemic since the previous poll, on January 20 and 21, when 48% of respondents expressed disapproval.
It also showed that 50% of Brazilians reject a potential impeachment of Bolsonaro, while 46% are in favor. In the January survey, 53% were against impeachment, while 42% supported it.
The PoderData survey was conducted between March 15th and 17th and 3,500 people were interviewed by phone.
(Reporting by Eduardo Simões, Ricardo Brito and Ana Mano, Writing by Ana Mano, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Richard Pullin)