TRE-SP denies Boulos’ request that the Datafolha research not be published

The Electoral Court rejected the request made by the Guilherme Boulos (PSOL) campaign to prevent the publication of the Datafolha survey which, last week, showed mayor Ricardo Nunes (MDB) ahead with 55% of voting intentions, against 33% of the psolist. According to judge Rodrigo Marzola Colombini, from the 2nd Electoral Zone of São Paulo, no “technical deficiencies or signs of manipulation” were found.

In the decision released this Thursday (17), the judge also asked the Public Electoral Ministry to comment and for Datafolha to present its defense in the process. ”The research was already released on October 10, and the desired injunction is too drastic. It is more reasonable for the analysis to be carried out under adversarial scrutiny, after the defense of the defendant and the hearing of the Electoral Public Prosecutor’s Office. Possible expert evidence may even be necessary”, wrote Colombini.

Boulos’ campaign had asked the Regional Electoral Court (TRE) for Datafolha to provide clarification on the survey carried out on October 8 and 9, claiming that the institute “did not report changes made outside of registration with the TSE”.

The psolista team believes that the aforementioned changes would have benefited Nunes. According to the campaign, the weightings used by the institute had not been informed to the TSE. In the request, the campaign highlighted “a difference of 11.5 percentage points between the direct result of the questionnaires and that released to the public, presenting a scenario that does not match the reality of the data collected from the electorate”.

For the campaign, the institute did not detail all the uses of TSE weighting. “The Datafolha survey registered with the TSE provided for this type of weighting, but only for information on gender, age and education.”

The institute used the weighting of who voters voted for in the first round of elections and who they would vote for in the second in the responses of those interviewed who had chosen Pablo Marçal (PRTB). In the survey contested by the psolist campaign, 84% of voters who said they had voted for Marçal in the first round tended to vote for Nunes, while Boulos was left with just 4% of this electorate.

The most recent Datafolha survey on the São Paulo election, released last Thursday, the 17th, shows the current mayor with 51% and the federal deputy with the same 33% as in the previous survey.