Approval Rates of Brazil’s President and Congress Drop

By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – The latest Datafolha opinion poll shows that more than half of Brazilians classify President Dilma Rousseff’s administration as well as the Brazilian Congress as bad or terrible. President Rousseff is finishing up the third month of her second term in office and the survey shows that she already has the highest disapproval rate of any Brazilian leader since former president Fernando Collor de Mello (September of 1992).

According to the survey, 62 percent of Brazilians say that the Rousseff administration is ‘bad’ or ‘terrible’. A poll taken at the beginning of February showed that 44 percent of those surveyed had classified the Rousseff administration in those categories.

In the latest Datafolha survey only thirteen percent found the administration ‘good’ or ‘excellent’, against 23 percent registered in February.

The highest rejection rates are seen in the Center-West and Southeastern regions and in the more urban areas, with more than 200,000 inhabitants. The majority of those who rated the Rousseff administration negatively, 66 percent, have a household income of between 2-5 minimum wages.

Brazil’s Congressional representatives also were negatively rated, with fifty percent of all those interviewed stating that their performance was ‘bad’ or ‘terrible’. Only nine percent of those surveyed rated the performance of the Congressional representatives as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’.

The survey, released on Wednesday, March 18th, was conducted after Sunday’s nationwide protest against the Rousseff administration and widespread government corruption, which led more than 1.5 million people to the streets.

The survey interviewed 2,842 people from 172 municipalities. The margin of error is plus or minus two percentage points.