First round results showed that the far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro had a clear path to the presidency, but few expected that it would be this easy. According to a recent Ibope poll, 59% of the public will vote for Bolsonaro in the upcoming second round and just 41% for his opponent, Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party.

Impact

Perhaps the most stunning revelation in the Ibope poll is that Haddad now has a higher rejection rate than Bolsonaro, with 47% of voters saying they’d never vote for Lula de Silva’s anointed heir. Just 35% said they’d never vote for Bolsonaro, a figure who has courted controversy at every step of his political career, making numerous enemies in female, people of color, and LGBT voting blocs.

Recall how Lula stayed in the race for as long as possible in the hope of transferring his popularity to a relatively unknown Haddad. It turns out that this had the opposite of the intended effect. In a two-horse race, Haddad has become emblematic of the corruption of the Lula era (and beyond), driving voters toward the perceived outsider in Jair Bolsonaro.