BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Brazilian polling agencies are facing a crackdown after their polls for the first round of the presidential election significantly underestimated the vote for the president and his allies.
President Jair Bolsonaro’s Justice Department called for a federal police investigation and the antitrust regulator launched an investigation Thursday into whether pollsters formed a cartel to manipulate election results. Allies in Congress are pushing for separate initiatives, one of which would impose jail sentences for polls that fail to accurately predict results.
Several analysts consulted by The Associated Press — even those who said the polls have room for improvement — opposed these efforts.
“The main goal is not to improve election polls, but to prosecute and punish institutions,” said Alberto Almeida, head of the political research institute Brasilis. “There were mistakes, but voting on a bill, doing a congressional investigation – that’s a shame. Criminalizing is pointless.”
Before the October 2 vote, many polls had indicated that Bolsonaro was way behind. Some suggested that left-wing former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva could even take a first-round victory. Most showed margins approaching or exceeding double digits.
Instead, Bolsonaro came within five points of da Silva and the two will face off in a second round on October 30. Bolsonaro’s right-wing allies in congressional and governor races also outperformed polls.
Throughout the campaign, Bolsonaro and his supporters had ridiculed pollsters’ findings, pointing instead to the president’s jam-packed meetings. Those, they said, represented his true support.
After the vote, they used the results as evidence. And a wave of attacks followed.
Attorney General Anderson Torres asked federal police to investigate polling stations and wrote on Oct. 4 that their behavior appeared to indicate criminal activity, though he did not specify what law they may have broken. Police launched their investigation Thursday, as did the federal antitrust regulator — only to have Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who also oversees the electoral court, block both investigations that night.
“These investigations appear to demonstrate the intent to comply with the electoral will of (Bolsonaro),” de Moraes wrote in his decision.
A pro-government senator asked the Senate to investigate which institutions operate “beyond acceptable margins.”
And Bolsonaro’s whip in the lower house presented a bill to criminalize polls held within 15 days of elections whose findings differ significantly from the results.
The proposal to penalize polls outside the grassroots goes well beyond previous attempts by the Brazilian Congress to ban polls in the immediate run-up to elections so that they cannot influence voters’ choices. Such a bill was passed in the House of Representatives last year, but was not adopted by the Senate.
Such blackout periods are common all over the world. Polls cannot be published within 15 days of the Chilean and Italian elections, eight days for Argentine races, five for Spain and three for Mexico.
By contrast, it is legal to publish polls in Greece and the UK until the day before the vote. There are no restrictions in the US, although most media organizations that sponsor polls on election day — including the AP — voluntarily wait to publish information that could preview the outcome in each state until the polls are closed.
Current Brazilian law prohibits the publication of a fraudulent poll but does not clarify how fraud can be identified, leaving room for interpretation, constitutional expert Vera Chemin said, so the nation should discuss reforming that legislation.
“But this must be done calmly and impartially, which is not the case now,” she said, adding that the proposal to punish pollsters is “too extreme”.
Under the terms, poll directors and coordinators, as well as customers who commission an errant poll, can be sentenced to between four and 10 years in prison and a fine.
The bill’s sponsor, Ricardo Barros, the whip of the House of Commons, said in an interview that he faces resistance from other lawmakers, but described the measure as an alternative to a pre-election poll ban – an approach previously declared unconstitutional. by the Supreme Court.
“I’d rather ban polls, but since we can’t do the same as other countries, pollsters need adequate techniques so that the results match what we see in the vote,” he said.
The Brazilian Association of Polling Stations expressed “outrage” at attempts to take legal action against them. It said the country’s polls are “diagnoses, not projections” and follow international standards.
Eduardo Grin, a political analyst with the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university and think tank in Sao Paulo, criticized the fact that Barros’s bill does not establish that intentional misconduct is necessary for punishment, saying it reflects Bolsonaro’s attempt to educate public opinion. testing for measures that limit society’s access to information.
During the campaign season, hardly a day goes by without the results of a new poll. This year’s first round had a whopping 975 polls on presidential candidates, a 92% increase from 2018, according to Daniel Marcelino, a data researcher for news site Jota who counted the polls registered with the electoral authority.
It is not clear why so many polls have missed Bolsonaro’s support. Analysts have said respondents who said they also preferred the multi-candidate race appeared to migrate to Bolsonaro at the last minute. Some suggested that so-called “shy voters” were embarrassed to publicize their support for Bolsonaro. Others said outdated census data had hurt the survey’s design.
Adriano Oliveira, director of Intelligence Scenario, a pollster based in the state of Pernambuco, said many polls ask questions in a way that skews the results. He said they should first ask whether respondents selected a candidate to avoid being pressured for an answer that is not indicative of their final vote. He also said that results are often presented and reported by the media as if voting intent is not subject to change.
Yet he said: “This crusade against research institutes is absurd. After all, it is a company, it functions within the free market. … People determine which institution has the most credibility.”
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