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Brazil's Lula leads polls for 2018 presidential race despite legal woes

Xinhua, October 20, 2016 Adjust font size:

Brazil's left-leaning former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva leads the list of potential candidates to run in the 2018 presidential race, despite his recent legal troubles, according to a poll released on Wednesday.

The survey, commissioned by the National Confederation of Transport (CNT) and carried out by pollster MDA, confirms the results of a separate poll published on Tuesday by polling firm Vox Populi.

The open-ended MDA poll, which let those queried propose their own possible candidates, as opposed to being given a list of names to select from, found Lula led with 11.4 percent support.

The next closest candidates received only around 3 percent support, including Jair Bolsonaro of the conservative Social Christian Party (3.3 percent), Aecio Neves of the centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party (3.1 percent), and current interim President Michel Temer of the center-right Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (3 percent).

Lula, of the Workers' Party (PT), has been accused of corruption in relation to Operation Carwash, a long-running investigation into spawling high-level graft.

He has denied the accusations, and claimed they are politically motivated to prevent him from returning to the elections.

When presented with a list of potential candidates, 24.8 percent of those queried chose Lula, distantly followed by Neves (15.7 percent).

The MDA survey polled 2,002 people in 137 cities from Oct. 13 to 16. Endit