Brazilian dictator Jair Bolsonaro, fuming over public polls that low-balled his strength ahead of the first round presidential election earlier this month, has fast-tracked a bill through Brazil’s House of Representatives that would make it a criminal offense to publish a poll for an election whose result is later outside the margin of error for that poll, the New York Times reports.
The bill faces an unclear at best prospect in Brazil’s Senate, where Bolsonaro’s opponents hold a majority, but it was just part of the pro-Trump despot’s ongoing meltdown amid his narrow path to a second term, in which he claimed the polling misses swung as many as three million first-round votes to his leftist opponent, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “Not for getting it wrong, OK? An error is one thing,” Bolsonaro said. “It’s for the crimes they committed.”
“Starting this type of investigation during the runoff campaign period, when the polling companies are carrying out their work, demonstrates another clear attempt to impede scientific research,” the Brazilian Association of Pollsters said in a statement reacting to the legislation.