Making predictions about Brazilian politics is a thankless and often useless task. After the endless unforeseen twists and turns of the 2013 street protests, 2014 election, and Congress’s impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, many commentators have rightly adopted a strict ‘wait and see’ attitude with regards to future events. The only forecasters which have remained credible over these turbulent years are the country’s two leading pollsters: Datafolha and Ibope.
With election season in full swing and the country heading to the polls in less than a month, opinion polls have once again taken center stage in the political debate. The...