Brazil’s leaders push law that would make faulty polls a crime
Foes see effort as a Bolsonaro bid to contest election
BRASÍLIA, Brazil — In the first round of Brazil’s closely watched elections this month, the polls were off the mark. They significantly underestimated the support for the far-right incumbent, President Jair Bolsonaro, and other conservative candidates across the country.
Many on the right were furious, criticizing the pollsters as out of touch with the Brazilian electorate.
That response was expected. What happened next was not.
At the urging of Bolsonaro, some of Brazil’s leaders are now trying to make it a crime to incorrectly forecast an election.
Brazil’s House of Representatives has fast-tracked a bill that would criminalize publishing a poll that is later shown to fall outside its margin of error. The House, which is controlled by Bolsonaro’s allies, is expected to vote and pass the measure in the coming days.
The bill’s final shape and fate are unclear. House leaders have suggested they may soften the legislation, and its prospects in the Senate, where opponents of Bolsonaro are in the majority, appear far less certain.
Still, whatever the measure’s fate, the proposal and other efforts to investigate pollsters for their recent miscalculations are part of a broader narrative pushed by Bolsonaro and his allies, without evidence, that Brazil’s political establishment and the left are trying to rig the election against him.
As Brazil prepares to vote in a presidential runoff Oct. 30, the surveys continue to show Bolsonaro trailing his left-wing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former president, although the race seems to be tightening.
For his part, Bolsonaro has taken to calling the polling firms “liars,” claimed that their mistakes swung up to 3 million votes to da Silva in the first round and has advocated for the firms to face consequences.
“Not for getting it wrong, OK? An error is one thing,” he said. “It’s for the crimes they committed.”
He has not said what crimes he believes were committed.
The Brazilian Association of Pollsters said in a statement that it was “outraged” at the attempts to criminalize surveys that turn out to be inaccurate.
“Starting this type of investigation during the runoff campaign period, when the polling companies are carrying out their work, demonstrates another clear attempt to impede scientific research,” the group said.
Polling firms added that their work was not to predict elections, but to provide a snapshot of voters’ intentions at the time a survey is conducted.
The bill in Congress is not the only effort to target pollsters. Following a request from Bolsonaro’s campaign, Brazil’s justice minister ordered the federal police to open an investigation into polling firms over their surveys before the first election round. And Brazil’s federal antitrust agency opened its own inquiry into some of the nation’s top polling institutions for possible collusion.
Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice and Brazil’s elections chief, quickly ordered both of those investigations halted, saying that they lacked jurisdiction and that they appeared to be doing the president’s political bidding. In turn, Moraes ordered Brazil’s election agency to investigate whether Bolsonaro was trying to use his power over federal agencies inappropriately.
Moraes has emerged as the top check on Bolsonaro’s power over the past year, drawing criticism at times for measures that, according to experts in law and government, represent a repressive turn for Brazil’s top court.
The top polling firms had forecast that Bolsonaro would receive roughly 36 percent of the vote in the first round. He received 43.2 percent, a sevenpoint gap that was outside virtually all polls’ margins of error.