FILE PHOTO: Former Brazilian President and presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and his wife Rosangela Da Silva gesture as he holds the Brazilian flag with Roberto Requiao, candidate for state governor of Parana, during a rally in Curitiba, Brazil, September 17, 2022. REUTERS/Rodolfo Buhrer/File Photo
(Reuters) - Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has widened his lead over incumbent Jair Bolsonaro to 10 points ahead of next month's presidential election, a Genial/Quaest poll released on Wednesday showed.
The bitter rivals are locked in a battle to lead Latin America's largest economy in a race defined by a deeply polarized Brazil.
The new survey put support for Lula at 44% in the first-round vote on Oct. 2 against 34% for Bolsonaro. A week earlier the leftist Lula was favored by 42% of those surveyed, while the far-right Bolsonaro had 34% support.
In an expected Oct. 30 run-off, Lula's lead also rose to a 10-point advantage, 50% to 40%, up by 2 percentage points from the previous survey.
The Genial/Quaest poll found that negative views of Bolsonaro's government edged up slightly to 39% from 38% last week, while the percentage of those who see the government in a positive light dipped one percentage point to 31%.
Pollster Quaest interviewed 2,000 voters in person between September 17-20. Its poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
(Reporting by Carolina Pulice; Editing by David Alire Garcia and Richard Pullin)
