I've been a bit busy in the last few days, and with all the hoopla over the debates I didn't post much about the elections in Brazil.
But yesterday we had a new poll about the runoff in São Paulo and I'll be writing a bit about it today.
I found an UPI article in english on Washington Times about it:
Sao Paulo, Brazil, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- Sao Paulo mayoral candidate Jose Serra is leading incumbent Marta Suplicy in polls leading up to a runoff election, Estado de Sao Paulo reported Sunday.
Serra -- from the center-right Social Democrat Party - has 51 percent of the vote, according to the Datafolha polling firm, while Suplicy has 39 percent, with the rest of voters still undecided.
PSDB is not actually a center-righ party, but a center-left party, but they are to the right of PT.
More below the fold.
Serra won the first round of the election earlier this month with 43.5 percent of the vote, while Suplicy received 35.7 percent. In third and fourth place were former mayors Paulo Maluf and Luiza Erundina.
The UPI article doesn't go much further than that, but in the brazilian press we have lots of more information, here are a few that I collected
The national comittee from both Paulo Maluf's PP Party and Luiza Erundina's PSB party have pledged to support Marta Suplicy, but neither candidate has come out with their own endorsement. Erundina has already declared that she will not be supporting any of them. Maluf is still negotiating.
Paulo Maluf is the target of a bit congressional investigation alleging corruption and money laundry (to the tunes of more than 100 million dollars) and the rumors since the beginning of the campaign is that he is negotiating with PT National Comittee to support her and have them cut some slack for him on this investigation, but there is nothing to prove that.
This same poll showed some interesting numbers about Maluf and Erundina voters. While Erundina's votes are splitting almost in equal numbers (39% for each candidate, Serra and Marta) Maluf's votes are going 70% for Serra and only 13% for Marta.
Another interesting information is that Marta Suplicy has a very high rejection rate of 42% against only 29% of voters who reject José Serra.
This race is very important to set the stage to our presidential election in 2006 because José Serra was the candidate who lost to Lula da Silva in our last presidential election and São Paulo is the home of both PT and PSDB which are turning to be the two strong parties in our modern political scene.