Far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro left pollsters scratching their heads this week, after he secured millions more votes than expected in the country’s October 2 election, despite ending up in second place behind his left-wing rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro finished the first round with 43.2 percent support compared with 48.4 percent for Lula, according to Brazil’s Superior Electoral Tribunal, forcing a run-off on October 30 as neither candidate was able to secure more than 50 percent.
Yet prior to the election, renowned polling agencies such as IPEC and Datafolha had shown Lula, who served as Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2010, with an advantage of as many as 14 percentage points over Bolsonaro.
The former army captain‘s surprisingly successful showing is one of several examples in recent years where polling has been off the mark, experts said, especially when it comes to support for right-wing and far-right politicians.
Gustavo Flores-Macias, a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University in the United States, said the Brazilian election results showed that pollsters “clearly haven’t figured out” how deep support runs for the country’s right-wing.
“It gives a sense the polls cannot be trusted, or the integrity of the election is in question,” he told Al Jazeera.
Global phenomenon
Brazilian polling agencies are not alone in underestimating support for right-wing figures.
In 2016, Donald Trump’s US presidential election victory over Hillary Clinton sent shockwaves around the world. And while Trump lost in 2020 to current US President Joe Biden, he still managed to once again outperform in the polls.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2019 also stunned observers after winning an outright majority, despite most pollsters predicting that he would need to form a coalition government.
According to Flores-Macias, one reason support for right-wing and far-right candidates is underrepresented globally is due to hesitance on the part of their supporters to reveal their real plans on Election Day.
“This often has to do with social desirability bias – in that a lot of voters a reluctant to show their true preferences, thinking that if they do it’s not the response that is politically correct or socially acceptable,” he said.
Bolsonaro has been widely…