A supporter with a towel depicting the president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro draped on his back attends a rally to launch Bolsonaro’s reelection bid, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sunday, July 24, 2022. Brazil’s general elections are scheduled for Oct. 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
By DIANE JEANTET and DAVID BILLER, Associated Press
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — As keen supporters of Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro claim polls signaling he will lose his reelection bid can’t be trusted, an unlikely proxy has emerged: towel sales.
Cashing in on skepticism of pollsters ahead of October elections, some street vendors have begun using scoreboards to track sales of towels bearing the faces of far-right Bolsonaro and his rival, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the leftist Workers’ Party.
The boards have become a social media sensation in recent days. The trend is dubbed “DataToalha,” a pun alluding to the country’s most prominent pollster, Datafolha (toalha is Portuguese for towel.)
At one stand in Rio de Janeiro’s city center on Wednesday, da Silva led 43 to five. Vendor Jose Lucas da Silva, 28, said sales have soared and his scoreboard is drawing crowds and comments from passersby.
“It’s a joke, a joke that’s working out!” he said. “Whoever wants to participate just needs to buy!”
Were such sales a solid barometer for voter intent, they would indicate an even wider margin of victory for da Silva than Datafolha surveys. Its most recent poll, conducted in June, shows the former president with almost 50 percent, compared to 28 percent for Bolsonaro. The two-day survey of 2,556 people had a margin of error of two percentage points.
Political analysts have said that gap will narrow as inflation slows and the government begins disbursing recently approved welfare payments.
Bolsonaro has cast doubt on polls’ reliability. He mocked a Datafolha poll last year that indicated da Silva would get nearly 60 percent of the votes in a runoff against him.
His voters are reading from the same hymn book. According to a May survey by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Novelo Data, groups backing Bolsonaro’s reelection have spread misleading news on WhatsApp, Telegram, and YouTube channels, seeking to tarnish the reputation of polling institutions. The researchers monitored more than 2,000 social media groups for several months.
At the party convention on Sunday that made Bolsonaro’s candidacy official, fans including Elizabeth da Costa Maia highlighted that Datafolha had projected Bolsonaro would lose the 2018 election—one of the most common arguments shared on pro-Bolsonaro social media groups.
“I don’t take those polls into consideration, especially because of the last result,” da Costa Maia, 58, said.
Datafolha’s poll one month before the runoff indeed indicated a Bolsonaro loss, but its poll just before that vote matched the ultimate result on the mark.
Bolsonaro supporters argue a more accurate way to gauge the upcoming result is watching the crowds that flood Bolsonaro demonstrations, which they refer to as DataPovo, or DataPeople. Such enthusiastic turnouts, they say, contrast with less visible support for da Silva.
“The best survey is in the street, the people. Lula can’t even set foot in the street,” Júlia Rodrigues, a 24-year-old student, said at the convention. “Bolsonaro is so close to the people, and we identify with him.”
The word DataToalha was coined by another university student, Harumy Sato, whose interviews of three towel vendors in Rio went viral nationwide on social media on July 23. Da Silva shared her video, and vendors began hanging chalkboards at their stands to tally sales.
alguém tinha que fazer o #datatoalha então eu fui lá e fiz pic.twitter.com/SCzKFEFaaT
— Harumy Sato (@harumysato) July 22, 2022
The video got more traction than anything produced so far in Sato’s journalism innovation class, much to her surprise.
“When I published more serious reports, they didn’t have such repercussion,” Sato said by phone. “It was supposed to be funny, unserious, and not as big as this!”
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AP producer Diarlei Rodrigues contributed from Rio de Janeiro.
