Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Some 71% of Brazilians Have No Preference Among Political Parties

2/10/2015

Brazilians demonstrate how to become middle classless society.

RIO DE JANEIRO – In January, 71 percent of Brazilians said they had no preference among political parties, the highest rate of rejection since 1989, according to a survey taken by the Datafolha firm and published Monday in the daily Folha de Sao Paulo.

In December, the percentage stood at 61 percent, but since then Brazilians’ distrust of politicians climbed sharply following the corruption scandal in the state-run oil company Petrobras and the negative reaction to economic austerity measures announced a few months before the reelection of President Dilma Rousseff.

That rejection was equally reflected in Rousseff’s popularity index, which, according to the poll just released, plunged from 42 percent in December to 23 percent in February, the worst rating for a Brazilian president since 1999.

The percentage of Brazilians with no preferred political party has not been this high since the 64 percent polled in June 2013, when millions of citizens poured into the streets in hundreds of cities around the country in an outcry against corruption and demanding better public services.

Among Brazilians who said they do have a preferred political party, 12 percent identified it in February as the ruling Workers Party (PT), to which Rousseff belongs, 5 percent said it was the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), while 4 percent opted for the center-right Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), the largest electoral force in the country and which holds the majority in Congress.

Last December, 22 percent considered the PT their party of preference, while 7 percent supported the PSDB.

This latest survey, taken last week with a sample of 4,000 Brazilian voters in 188 municipalities, has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent.

“The perception of increasing corruption associated with fear of a lower standard of living sparked a crisis of representation in the country, evidenced by the soaring rejection index for political parties,” Folha de Sao Paulo said.


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