Brazilian President Rousseff's approval rating plummets to new low

Xinhua

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Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff's approval rating plunged to 8 percent in August, a record low, according to a poll released Thursday by the Datafolha Institute.

A total of 71 percent of those polled disapproved of President Rousseff's work, higher than the disapproval rate of 68 percent scored by former President Fernando Collor prior to his impeachment in 1992, according to Datafolha.

President Rousseff's approval rate was even lower in the midwestern region, including Brasilia, where she scored just 6 percent, but higher in the northeastern region where she reached 10 percent.

The Datafolha poll was carried out on Aug. 4-5, with 3,358 electors being polled in 201 towns across Brazil. The stated margin of error is 2 percentage points.

The opposition has actively been seeking for Rousseff's impeachment since her narrow re-election in October 2014. Rousseff 's victory has made the Workers' Party, the ruling party, become the most long-lived party to hold the presidency in the country, with its candidates having been elected to the office for four consecutive terms.

Over the past months, several legal experts have stated that there is no legal basis for an impeachment process against Rousseff. In Brazil, an impeachment cannot be called based only on popular dissatisfaction as the process needs to be backed by a legitimate legal motive. Enditem