President Dilma Rousseff’s performance in the polls has been absolutely disastrous recently. At the same time, it is misleading to say, in English, that her “approval rating” is 10%. That is because unlike polls done on American presidents, Brazil’s Datafolha polling system is tripartite.
Respondents are given three options. They can rate the government “good/great,” “regular,” or “bad/terrible.” Well, there are actually four, as you can say you don’t know. But by now (she was elected in 2010), pretty much everyone has an opinion.
Observe that her “good/great” numbers were quite high until 2013 (when protests broke out), and now they are at a pitiful 10%. But the people essentially saying “meh” has not dropped so much. Those two groups add up to 34%, while a whopping 65% actively disapprove of her government.
So her numbers are terrible, just terrible. But it’s not accurate to say that everyone in the country hates her, either.
