Brazilian Government launches investigation against polling institutes for possible “manipulation”

The Brazilian government announced today that it would open an investigation against the three leading polling institutes after accusing them of “manipulating” the results of the first round of the Oct. 2 presidential election.

The president of Brazil’s antitrust agency Cade (Administrative Council for Economic Defense), Alexandre Cordeiro, announced that an investigation would be launched against the companies Datafolha, Ipec, and Ipespe for allegedly forming a cartel to manipulate the election results.

Cordeiro said it was “doubtful” that all the polls published by the three companies differed so much from the final result.

All polls predicted a clear victory for former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

In the days leading up to the election, polls saw Lula winning the first round with more than 50 percent of the vote against Bolsonaro with about 36 percent.

Lula was in the lead with 48.4 percent of the vote, but Bolsonaro received 43.2 percent, much higher than all polls indicated.

“The discrepancy between the polls and the result is so great that there are indications that the errors were not accidental, but deliberate, due to an operation prepared by the polling agencies in the form of a cartel to manipulate the market as a whole and ultimately the elections,” Cordeiro said.

“Against this backdrop, I have done some preliminary analysis on the probabilities of the outcome and the independence of action of the institutes in the preparation of the electoral polls in the first round of the campaign for the presidency of the Republic,” he added.

“It is indeed a matter of verifying whether the suspicions expressed have a technical basis and justify an investigation by the Antitrust Authority,” he said.

Just two days after the first round of voting, Justice Minister Anderson Torres had announced that the Federal Police would launch an investigation into the polling stations for possible manipulation.

The three companies deny all allegations.