© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attends a ceremony at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil, March 21, 2023. REUTERS/Adriano Machado/File Photo
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Nearly a third of Brazilians disapprove of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, putting the leftist leader on about the same level of unpopularity as his right-wing predecessor Jair Bolsonaro during the first three months of his presidency, according to a survey. quoted by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo showed on Saturday.
Lula, who took office in January after narrowly defeating Bolsonaro in last October’s election, is approved by 38% of Brazilians, with 29% disapproving of his performance, according to a Datafolha poll.
Bolsonaro, who served as president from 2019 until the end of 2022, has never formally conceded Lula’s defeat. On January 8, just a week after Lula began his third term as president, Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings in the federal capital Brasilia to protest the election result.
After about three months of self-imposed exile in the United States, Bolsonaro returned to Brazil this week.
Datafolha interviewed 2,028 people on Wednesday and Thursday in 126 cities. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus two percentage points.
