Rio Governor Approval Falls to 12%: Daily

By Ben Tavener, Senior Contributing Reporter

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – The results of a survey performed by Ibope and commissioned by the Confederação Nacional da Indústria (National Confederation of Industry, CNI) published on Thursday show that support for Rio state governor Sérgio Cabral (PMDB) stands at just twelve percent. 

This is the proportion of people who evaluate the governor as “good” or “excellent.” Fifty percent of respondents answered “bad” or “terrible”; 36 percent said “satisfactory.”

It is the first time the CNI has commissioned a poll on the governor’s popularity and therefore there are no previous results for comparison. However, a poll by Datafolha published on July 1st showed approval for Cabral had fallen from 55 to 25 percent.

Ibope also asked how respondents evaluated Cabral’s style of governing, of which only 29 percent approved and 66 percent disapproved; only a quarter of respondents said they trusted the governor.

On the use of public funds, 87 percent of those surveyed said they felt the governor and the secretariat used public resources “poorly” or “very poorly.”

The survey was carried out after mass anti-government protests, which opposed the way in which the local government had spent public funds – including on the World Cup, the Olympics and the current visit by Pope Francis, who is in Brazil for World Youth Day.

Many of the protests, which sparked earlier in June and have seen over 300,000 people take to the streets on one night in Rio alone, have called for Cabral to be sacked.

Two other Ibope polls released on Thursday have shown low approval ratings for both President Dilma Rousseff and São Paulo governor Geraldo Alckmin.

According to Ibope, the president’s approval rating now stands at 31 percent, which is in line with the results of other surveys carried out recently, including one on July 16th by the National Confederations of Transport (CNT), which showed a 31.3-percent approval rating.

Just earlier this year, the president had enjoyed approval ratings in the 60s, but even before the protests took hold, the president’s rating fell from 65 to 57 percent, and then further still during and following the main wave of mass protests in June.

The latest results will make gruesome reading for the president, who is up for re-election in 2014. Recent polls showed the president would certainly have to face a run-off if the elections were held today.

The Ibope results also showed that Governor Alckmin is equally supported – 26 percent said they rated his as “good” or “excellent” – as he is disliked – 26 percent said “poor” or “terrible.” The governor of Brazil’s biggest city and business center had previously enjoyed approval ratings of over fifty percent.

Read more (in Portuguese).

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