Brazil: Bolsonaro’s government has 56% disapproval and 36% approval

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The government of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) is disapproved by 56% of the Brazilian population, shows a PoderData survey conducted from May 8 to 10, 2022. This rate oscillated two percentage points upward since the last survey, conducted 15 days earlier.

Approval of the Bolsonaro administration is now at 36% – a variation of two percentage points downwards in two weeks. There are still 8% who could not answer the question.

The fluctuations registered in this survey round were within the study’s margin of error, of two percentage points more or less, but with a negative movement for the Presidential Palace.

Disapproval has been oscillating between 53% and 61% since January of this year. Approval has been ranging from 31% to 38%.

The gap between approval and disapproval is now 20 percentage points, four points more than in the round a fortnight ago and the same as a month ago. This gap had already been 36 points in the passage from August to September.

PoderData conducted the survey and collected the data from May 8 to 10, 2022, through phone calls. There were 3,000 interviews in 288 cities in the 27 states of the Federation. The margin of error is two percentage points. The confidence interval is 95%.

To reach 3,000 interviews that proportionally fill (as they appear in society) the groups by sex, age, income, education, and geographical location, PoderData makes tens of thousands of phone calls. Often, there are more than 100,000 calls until the interviewees that faithfully represent the entire population are found.

DEMOGRAPHIC HIGHLIGHTS

Poder360 highlights the following clippings from the survey:

• age – in the elderly group (+ 60 years old), 42% approve of the government;
• education – 63% of those who have completed elementary school disapprove of the government;
• region – those who live in the North (46%) and Center-West (44%) are the ones who most approve of the government; in the Northeast, disapproval is 59%.

BOLSONARO’S WORK

PoderData also asked the interviewees about their evaluation of Jair Bolsonaro’s work. For 53%, the president is “bad” or “terrible”, while 28% consider him “great” or “good”. Another 16% consider him “regular”.

In the last round two weeks earlier, these rates were 50%, 28%, and 20%, respectively.

Bolsonaro’s “good/very good” rate had been swinging upward from December 2021 to the end of February 2022. The favorable movement was interrupted in mid-March when the curve swung from 30% to 27%. Since then, the curve has remained between 27% and 29%.

The question about government evaluation with five options (excellent, good, regular, bad, or terrible) is a Brazilian idiosyncrasy. In the country where most surveys are carried out with the population, the United States, for decades, only the most direct question, with only two options for answers (approve or disapprove), has been used.

A portion of those who prefer to answer “regular” (when there is this option) may approve or disapprove of the leader or the government, but everything remains in a gray area.
Gap: 25 p.p.

With the result, the gap between those who think Bolsonaro’s work is “bad” or “terrible” and those who evaluate him as “great” or “good” is 25 percentage points. A fortnight ago, it was 22 points. The largest gap was 35 p.p in November 2021.

METHODOLOGY

The survey results were rounded to make them easier to read. Because of this process, the sum of some of the results for some questions may be different from 100. Differences between the total frequencies and percentages in variable crosstabulations may occur due to non-response occurrences. The survey is registered at the TSE under the number BR-08423/2022.

With information from Poder360