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By Anthony Boadle
BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro, stabbed in the chest at a rally last week, has maintained his lead, but has not seen much in a Datafolha survey released Monday.
The first investigation conducted since Bolsonaro's near-death stab showed that he had won 24% of potential votes among respondents, compared to 22% in a Datafolha survey released last month. The leftist Ciro Gomes has risen to second place, with 13% against 10%.
The knife attack against Bolsonaro has further complicated Brazil's most unpredictable elections in three decades, with its most popular politician, former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, imprisoned, banned from voting on October 7 due to a conviction for bribery.
In the likely case of a second round of voting, the investigation revealed that Bolsonaro would be tied to Fernando Haddad, who is almost certain to be nominated as a Labor Party candidate this week, but he would lose a lot to all the other big ones rivals.
Bolsonaro, a former army captain who advocates easing gun control laws to fight crime, has sparked controversy by commenting on women, gays, blacks and populace indigenous. He led the field from the start in the polls that excluded Lula, exploiting the anger of voters about political corruption.
Gomes, a former governor of the state of Ceará, in northeastern Brazil, showed Sunday night that his attacks on Bolsonaro would not be slowed by his stabbing. the stomach, but that did not change anything in his head. "
Environmentalist Marina Silva moved from second to third place in the Datafolha survey, with 11% less than 5 percentage points.
The poll of Globo TV and the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo was published while Lula spent the day in prison with the former mayor of Sao Paulo, Fernando Haddad, who remains a candidate for the vice presidency on the ticket of PT.
The PT's strategy has been to keep Lula's candidacy alive for as long as possible, and then work to transfer his support to Haddad, who won 9% of the vote, compared with 4% in the same poll a few weeks ago.
Haddad's chances of making the second round between the two candidates who will get the most votes will depend on his ability to tap into Lula's massive support.
In Monday's poll, business-centrist candidate Geraldo Alckmin registered 10 percent of the vote, up from 9 percent last month.
Datafolha polled 2,804 voters across Brazil on Monday. The survey has a margin of error of two percentage points.
(Report by Anthony Boadle, written by Brad Brooks, edited by Lisa Shumaker)
