Brazil Election - 5 October 2014

[Mogrovejo]

First runoff poll:
Aécio - 54
Dilma - 46

http://epoca.globo.com/tempo/eleicoes/noticia/2014/10/baecio-54-x-dilma-46b-primeira-pesquisa-sobre-o-segundo-turno.html

Instituto Paraná Pesquisas for Época magazine. No idea about their reputation (the pollster, Época is a widely read magazine from Globo, the Brazilian version of Focus).

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I'm glad Mário Jardel was elected for RGS state assembly! He was listed as "Jardel centroavante" - the other guy elected by the PSD was another former footballer listed as "Darnlei Goleiro" (Jardel the Striker and Darnlei the goalkeeper). Brazilian ballot names are a true gem.

[Mogrovejo]

Just found a piece on right wing blogger Reinaldo Azevedo. 30 mio. unique visitors a year is pretty impressive. Is his influence still large? How is his line of attack against Dilma?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andersonantunes/2013/11/25/a-conversation-with-reinaldo-azevedo-brazils-most-hated-and-widely-read-blogger/

http://veja.abril.com.br/blog/reinaldo/

Brazilian posters can correct me, but my impression is that magazine/newspapers consumers in Brazil skew way to the right relatively to the average/median voter.  That effect is even deeper wrt political content/blogging. So it's not surprising the most popular/influential blogger is someone from the right. Azevedo is likely still to the right of the median Brazilian right-winger.

His line of attack is that you'd expect from a classic liberal-conservative, as he defines himself in that interview, but with a heavy focus on corruption issues and plenty of political/horserace analysis. He'd probably feel at home on NRO if he were American, writing a lengthy essay from time to time and contributing with frequent posts for the Corner.

[Mogrovejo]

The Economist endorsed Aécio Neves. No surprises.

In the USA, The Economist has already endorsed republican and democratic candidates. In the UK, The Economist has already endorsed conservative and labour candidates. In Italy, The Economist has already been against Berlusconi. Outside these three countries, this newspaper had always endorsed the candidates of the Right.

This is not the case, and not just in Australia but also Canada.

Yeah, they endorsed Labor in 2001 in Australia as well. And they've endorsed Congress in India, the Kemalists in Turkey and a few others.

It's to be excepted that they tend to endorse left of center parties more often in the Anglosphere because the ideological average tends to be more to the right relatively to most of the other countries - surely relatively to South America (although they rarely endorse in non-Anglo countries). Plus, they have a strong bias against incumbent governments that are perceived as sleazy in the management of public resources or corruption prone and (fairly or unfairly) that's the case of Dilma's government - it's central to their endorsement editorial.