Lula maintains large lead over Bolsonaro ahead of Brazil election -poll

SAO PAULO (Reuters) -Brazil presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva slightly extended his lead over President Jair Bolsonaro less than two weeks before the South American country’s election, a poll by IPEC released on Monday showed.

In a first-round vote scheduled for Oct. 2, Lula reached 47% of voters’ support against 31% for Bolsonaro, compared with 46% and 31%, respectively, in the same poll a week ago, the survey showed.

In a potential second-round runoff, Lula’s lead grew to 19 percentage points from 17 previously, indicating he would get elected with 54% of the votes versus Bolsonaro’s 35%.

Bolsonaro’s approval rate was flat at 30%, while his disapproval rate increased to 47%, from 45% last week.

Pollster IPEC, formerly known as IBOPE, interviewed 3,008 people in person from Sept. 17-18. The poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

(Reporting by Peter Frontini; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Leslie Adler)