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Half of Brazilians in favor of early presidential elections: poll

Xinhua, June 9, 2016 Adjust font size:

A new poll released Wednesday showed that half of Brazilians would favor immediate presidential elections instead of waiting until January 2018, as currently planned.

A poll carried out by the MDA Institute, one of Brazil's foremost research companies, found that 50.3 percent of eligible voters were in favor while 46.1 percent were against.

This is the first poll to be published since Michel Temer assumed the interim presidency on May 12, after President Dilma Rousseff was suspended, pending her impeachment trial.

As for who Brazilians would prefer to see as president, 22 percent of voters would choose former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 15.9 percent would pick Senator Aecio Neves, the leader of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), and 14.8 percent would pick Marina Silva, of the environmentally friendly Rede party.

The news could not have made Temer or Rousseff happy, since the poll found only 5.4 percent would want Temer to be the next president and 2.3 percent supported Rousseff.

However, while 61.5 percent of those polled thought that the impeachment process against Rousseff was legitimate, 33.3 percent said it was illegitimate.

A total of 68.2 percent believed the Senate will find Rousseff guilty and remove her permanently from office while 25.3 percent maintain she will return to the country's top job.

Asked what they thought the reason for the impeachment process was, 44.1 percent of respondents said it was corruption and 37.3 percent pointed to attempts to block corruption investigations.

MDA interviewed 2,002 people in 137 municipalities across 25 Brazilian states, with an error margin of 2.2 percent. Endite