Brazil: 39% can’t say how they will vote for congress members, says survey

A PoderData survey conducted from September 25 to 27 shows that 39% of voters cannot say how they will vote for the House of Representatives.

The result is the sum of those who say they have not yet decided how to vote for a federal representative (26%) and those who could not answer the question (13%).

The percentage of voters who have already decided their vote for federal deputy is 61%. In mid-August, this rate was 51%.

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

The results are released in editorial partnership with TV Cultura. Data were collected from September 25 to 27, 2022, through calls to cell phones and landlines.

There were 4,500 interviews in 323 cities in the 27 states. The margin of error is 1.5 percentage points. The confidence interval is 95%. The TSE registration is BR-01426/2022.

To reach 4,500 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.

DEMOGRAPHIC HIGHLIGHTS

• age – the youngest are the most decided: 70% have already chosen their candidate for the House of Representatives;
• education – among those with higher education, 68% have already decided how they will vote for the House;
• region – the Midwest has the lowest percentage of decided voters: 56%.

CROSSROAD: VOTING IN THE 1ST ROUND

The vote decision rates for federal deputies among Lula da Silva’s voters (62%) and Bolsonaro’s (61%) are close to those registered among the electorate in general (61%).

POLL DIFFERENCES

This presidential election is proving challenging for polling companies. Many results indicate diverging signals. It has become difficult to know what the real trend is at this moment.

It is important to say that all polls are correct, each within the methodology it chooses. Each system can have advantages and disadvantages, depending on the conjuncture they intend to ascertain.

In 2018, for example, there was a lot of “shame vote” for Jair Bolsonaro. Some in-person surveys had difficulty capturing this kind of preference.

On the other hand, phone surveys gave more comfort to some of the voters who opted for the then-presidential candidate for the PSL (today, Bolsonaro is in the PL).

It is not yet clear what impact each methodology has on data collection. But it is already known that in-person polls tend to point to a looser lead for Lula da Silva.

And telephone surveys (especially automated and neutral ones, with a recording asking the questions, such as PowerData) tend to show a tighter race.

In the United States, face-to-face polls have not been used to gauge voting intention at the national level for decades.

The highly polarized environment hampers data collection when the interviewer and respondent face each other.

In short, it is important to note that it is not a question of one poll or the other being wrong – they are different methodologies. At the end of this campaign, it will be possible to know which system will have been the most appropriate to point out tendencies in the current Brazilian political moment.

With information from Poder360