Brazil: Finance Minister Haddad is good or great for 24% of those who know him – survey

By Sérgio Lima

The Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, does a “good” or “great” job for 1 in 4 voters who know him well or have heard of him, according to a PowerData survey.

Already 22% of respondents consider Haddad’s conduct “bad” or “lousy.”

Another 23% said they did not know.

The survey was conducted from April 2 to April 4, 2023.

Therefore, from the 92nd to the 94th day of Lula’s third term – just a few days after the presentation of the new spending cap.

On March 30, the Minister of Finance presented the fiscal framework – called by government officials the “new fiscal framework” – that will be adopted during President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s term.

The rule limits expenses to 70% of the increase in revenue and the intenduntry’s deficit until 2024.

The survey was conducted by PoderData, a company of the Poder360 Jornalismo group, with its resources.

Data were collected from April 2 to 4, 2023, through calls to cell phones and landlines. There were 2,500 interviews in 233 cities in the 27 units of the Federation.

The margin of error is two percentage points. The confidence interval is 95%.

To reach 2,500 interviews that proportionally fill out (as they appear in society) the groups by sex, age, income, education, and geographical location, PoderData makes tens of thousands of phone calls.

Often, it takes more than 100,000 calls until it finds the interviewees who faithfully represent the entire population.

Fernando Haddad, at this moment, is the minister with the most visibility and is in charge of the most sensitive area of the Lula government.

The PoderData survey shows his starting point on the map of public opinion – and, in the future, the viability of his eventual candidacy for the Presidential race.

At this point, the survey shows Haddad’s “ground zero”.

If Lula’s government still doesn’t seem to have proved itself in the eyes of the electorate, this is even more the case with Haddad.

The high rates of “regular” and “don’t know” indicate that the minister has the benefit of the doubt, but his name doesn’t have much of an initial positive charge either.

HADDAD VS. GUEDES

In 2020, still in the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), PoderData asked respondents about evaluating the then Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes.

Unlike Haddad, Guedes’s evaluation was very close to that of the then-president. While the Chief of Executive’s performance was “excellent”/”good” for 39% of the voters, Guedes had 34% approval.

With no pandemic and three years later, the situation with Haddad is different.

Lula’s work has the same positive evaluation rate as Bolsonaro’s in 2020: 39%.

However, Haddad’s job approval rate is 15 p.p. lower than the current Chief Executive’s.

STRATIFICATION

Haddad’s assessment varies little by demographic clipping.

Even the Southeast region, the minister’s origin, has similar rates to the general public, with differences within the margin of error (2 p.p. for the total population).

HADDAD’S EVALUATION X BOLSA FAMILIA

The beneficiaries of a program considered a symbol of the PT administrations, who say they know Haddad, are divided into four groups of similar size:

25% think Haddad is “bad” or “terrible”, while 24% evaluate him as “great” or “good”; 24% consider him “regular,” and 27% don’t know.

WHY IT MATTERS

Fernando Haddad is the minister with the most visibility on the Esplanade.

He is in charge of the most sensitive area in Lula’s government.

The PoderData survey shows his starting point on the map of public opinion – and, in the future, the viability of a possible candidacy for the Planalto.

In Brazil, it is traditional for the head of the Treasury to be considered a candidate for presidential succession.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1993-1994) was the only case of success.

He headed the elaboration of the Real Plan during Itamar Franco’s mandate at the Planalto and then won the elections in the first round in 1994.

The negative examples are more numerous (in parentheses, the period each one was in charge of the Treasury):

• Antonio Palocci (2003-2006) – was cogitated as Lula’s successor. He left Lula’s Treasury 1 involved in scandals; he was arrested by the Lava Jato in 2016 and later snitched on his former boss;
• Henrique Meirelles (2016-2018) – came out as a candidate in 2018 for the MDB of then-President Michel Temer in a largely self-funded campaign. He came 7th in the 1st round, with 1.2% of the vote;
• Ciro Gomes (1994) – ran four times for the Planalto and never made it to the 2nd round. He usually cites his brief 116-day stint in campaigning as Itamar Franco’s Minister of Finance.

Haddad is 60 years old. He has been affiliated with the PT since 1983.

With the party, he was Minister of Education (2005-2012) and mayor of São Paulo (2013-2017).

He gained closer proximity to Lula while the president was in prison and was a candidate for president in 2018, with the campaign slogan “Haddad is Lula.”

When Haddad was appointed Finance Minister, it was implied that he could emerge as Lula’s natural successor.

The performance of the Brazilian economy under Haddad will define the possibility of the minister evolving into an eventual candidacy for the Planalto – possibly as early as 2026, considering that Lula is 77 years old and has signaled that he may not be a candidate for a 4th term.

What the PoderData survey shows at this moment is Haddad’s “zero point”.

In the PoderData survey, the evaluation of the Finance Minister is measured only among those who consider they know him “well” or “have heard of him”.

But it is also possible to calculate the weight of the numbers within the total set of voters: in the electorate as a whole, he is liked by something like 18% and disliked by 16%.

These are low numbers… for both sides.

The remaining 66% are somewhere vague: they don’t know the minister, don’t know what to think about his performance at the Treasury, or think that, at this point, he is merely “regular”.

All this tends to be temporary, especially in a polarized environment.

What will make Haddad’s name for the 2026 presidential race viable or not is the performance of the country’s economy.

It is still too early to know what will happen in the next three years and nine months.

WHO KNOWS HADDAD

Almost 3/4 (73%) of those interviewed say they know the Finance Minister.

This figure is the sum of those who said they know the Finance Minister “just heard of him” (46%) and those who said they “know him well” (27%).

Another 27% answered that they “don’t know him”.

The PowerData asked, “Do you know or have you heard of the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad?”

Read here the breakdowns by demographic groups (gender, age, region, education, family income, and religion) and here the rate of knowledge of the head of the economy of the Lula government among the beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família Program.

PODERDATA

The content of PoderData can be read on social networks, where infographics and news are shared. Follow the profiles of Poder360’s research division on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

RESEARCH AGGREGATOR

Poder360 maintains an archive with thousands of surveys with known methodologies about which it was possible to verify the origin of the information.

There have been studies conducted since the municipal elections of 2000. It is the largest and longest electoral survey available on the Brazilian internet.

The survey information began to be compiled by journalist Fernando Rodrigues, editorial director of Poder360, on his website in 2000.

METHODOLOGY

The PoderData survey was carried out from April 2 to 4th, 2023. We interviewed 2,500 people aged 16 or more in 233 municipalities in the 27 states of the Federation.

A parametric weighting was applied to compensate for disproportionalities in gender, age, level of education, region, and income.

Error is two percentage points higher or lower.

The interviews were carried out by telephone (for landlines and cell phones) using the IVR system (Audible Response Unit). The interviewee listens to recorded questions and answers through the device’s keyboard.

The study’s confidence interval is 95%.

To make it easier to read, the survey results were rounded.

Because of this process, the sum of some results may differ from 100.

Differences between the total frequencies and percentages in variable crossover tables may appear because of non-response occurrences.

This study was conducted with PoderData’s resources, a Poder360 Jornalismo media group research company.

With information from Poder360