BRASILIA (Reuters) – Approval of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s performance has fallen on Brazilian worries that Latin America’s largest economy is worsening, a new Genial/Quaest poll showed on Wednesday.
Approval of his way of governing has fallen to 54% in October from 60% in August, while 42% of those polled say he is doing a bad job, up from 35% in the previous survey.
Positive approval of his 10-month-old government has also slipped to 38% from 42% of respondents in August, and negative views rose 5 percentage points to 29%, the poll found.
“People are more concerned about the economy and have seen errors in the government’s positioning,” said Quaest pollster Felipe Nunes, citing Lula’s excessive travel abroad and lack of attention to floods in southern Brazil as missteps.
The number of Brazilians who see the economy deteriorating has risen to 32% from 23% in August, as optimism dipped to 33%from 34% of those who see the economy improving.
Still, more Brazilians believe Lula is doing better than his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro: 47% of those polled think his government is better than Bolsonaro’s, down from 49% in August, and those that say his government is worse rose to 38% from 34% in two months.
Genial/Quaest interviewed 2,000 people of voting age between Oct. 19 and Oct. 22. The poll has a 2.2 percentage point error margin.
(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Steven Grattan, Jonathan Oatis and Deepa Babington)
