Brazil's president sees poll numbers rising

Brasilia, May 23 (IANS/EFE) Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has a lead of 20 percentage points over her main challenger in the race for Brazil's Oct 5 presidential election, a survey shows.

According to a survey carried out by Instituto Ibope, 40 percent of the participants said they planned to vote for Rousseff and 20 percent planned to vote for Aecio Neves, the poll results released Thursday showed.

In third place is socialist Eduardo Campos, with 11 percent of the participants opting to vote for him.

If the election goes to a runoff, which would be required if no candidate wins outright, Rousseff will defeat Neves by 43 percent to 24 percent, according to the data, and will prevail over Campos by 42 percent to 22 percent.

Recent surveys conducted by Ibope had detected a slight drop in support for Rousseff, who had been at 40 percent in March but fell to 37 percent last month.

In Neves's case, the intention to vote for him among the public is following a rising curve and stood at 13 percent in March, 14 percent in April but now stands at 20 percent.

Campos, meanwhile, has gained 5 percentage points compared with his standing in earlier polls.

Ibope said that the survey was carried out May 15-19 among 2,002 registered voters around the country and has an error margin of 2 percent.

--IANS/EFE

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