68% of Brazilians Blame President Rousseff for Corruption, Says Datafolha

12/08/2014 - 08h59

In every 10 Brazilians, seven think President Dilma Rousseff has some responsibility in the Petrobras scandal, which involves contractors and politicians.

This is according to a survey by Datafolha, conducted on Dec. 2 and 3 and including 2,896 interviews.

Nevertheless, the revelations of Operation Lava Jato will cause no significant changes to her image.

For 42%, the Dilma administration is good or excellent. This is the same rate as on Oct. 21 when, at the end of the election and with daily TV advertising, she reached her best level since June 2013.

Disapproval suffered only a slight change. Previously 20% thought Dilma's administration was poor or very poor; that rate is now at 24%. The margin of error is two points.

	Editoria de Arte/Folhapress

The PT member arrived to the day before the start of her second term with 50% of the electorate thinking she would do a good job governing going forward.

The threshold is 23 points less than that observed before 2011 inauguration, but better than that of Fernando Henrique Cardoso on the eve of his second term in 1998 (41%).

Datafolha did not ask this question before Lula's second term.

Other data gives clues about the reason for Rousseff's popularity immobility despite her name being associated with the Petrobras case.

Concern with corruption has decreased. In June, it was seen as the country's main problem by 14% of the population. Now, that number has dropped to 9%. Healthcare leads the ranking at 43%, followed by violence/security with 18%.

In addition, 40% think the corrupt have never been punished as much as they are today.

DEMOCRACY

The presidential election this year, one of the fiercest since 1989, exercised positive effect on the relationship between the Brazilian population and the democratic regime.

Since that year, when Datafolha began measuring the confidence of the people with the newly consolidated regime, the highest rate recorded was in the last survey, carried out on Dec. 2 and 3, in which 66% of those interviewed said they believed that democracy is always better than any other form of government.

As a result, the number of respondents who said they did not care if the political system was a democracy or a dictatorship dropped to 15%.

This indicator is only beat out by that observed during the March 1993 survey, when 14% of respondents showed that opinion.

Another 12% of respondents said that in certain circumstances, a dictatorship is better than a democracy.

The lowest rate for this question was recorded in Dec. 2008, when 11% of those interviewed gave the same answer.

Another 7% of those questioned did not know how to answer Datafolha's questions.

When considering the level of education attained by respondents, among those who only attended elementary school, 57% believe that democracy is always the best form of government, which is a drop of nine percentage points from the overall average.

Looking at this same category of respondents, the rate of those who believe it does not matter whether the government is a democracy or a dictatorship rises to 19%, which is four points above the average.

Among those who completed higher education, the trend is reversed and 80% said that democracy is always the best form of government. The preference for a dictatorial regime is held only by 7%.

Translated by JILL LANGLOIS

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	Editoria de Arte/Folhapress