The first poll was conducted by the Brazilian Senate’s own e-Cidadania portal, an open public consultation tied to the provisional measure Lula signed on September 25 for Brazil to officially ban online betting and casino gaming. As of October 3, the portal showed 478,845 votes in favor of the ban and 80,387 votes against it, putting support at 85.6% of around 559,000 total votes. The consultation has no legal weight on how Congress eventually votes, and it isn’t a representative sample since anyone can take part and groups like Rio’s engineering union Senger-RJ and labor confederation CUT openly campaigned for members to vote yes.
A separate and stricter poll has also shown a similar pattern, as Pollster PoderData, working with the Poder360 news portal and the Aya Bancah app, ran 4,000 phone interviews between September 30 and October 2, with a margin of error of 1.5 percentage points. Asked directly whether they approved of Lula’s decision, 52% of respondents said yes, 31% said no, and 18% had no opinion.
The numbers add some public opinion to a government under legal pressure from the industry. Trade bodies ANJL and IBJR have already asked the Supreme Federal Court to suspend the measure, and broadcasters’ association Abert filed a similar request on October 1. No ruling has been made yet, and licensed betting sites and apps are set to go offline on October 6.
