Fact check. The headquarters of Lula da Silva’s campaign installed in the same place as a polling company?

On election days in Brazil, social networks have been fertile ground for various accusations against candidates. One of the last came from Gustavo Gayer, a candidate for deputy for the Liberal Party, the same party for which Jair Bolsonaro is running for a second term as President of the Republic.

It is a video published by the politician, and widely disseminated on social networks, about how a polling company, Ipec (Intelligence in Research and Strategic Consulting), supposedly has its headquarters in the same place as the headquarters of Lula da Silva.

Let’s go by parts. In fact, Ipec is a polling company that conducts opinion polls throughout Brazil and has given, like all other polls, an advantage to Lula da Silva over Jair Bolsonaro in the electoral race. The most recent polls show the possibility that the candidate supported by the Labor Party wins in the first round, with 50% of the voting intentions compared to 36% given to Bolsonaro.

The misinformation surrounding the polls in Brazil is not new. In fact, the Fact Checks published in the Observer have already been false polls that have sought to show a Bolsonaro advantage that does not really exist.

Fact check. Does Bolsonaro lead the poll published in the Globo newspaper with 46% of the votes compared to 31% for Lula?

But back to Gustavo Gayer. In fact, the candidate for deputy confused the Ipec pollster with IPEC (Instituto de Pesquisa e Estudos de Cidadania), the name used by the Lula Institute until 2011.

Despite having the same initials, they are actually different institutes. And, in addition to the names, there are also addresses other than those mentioned on social networks. The official records, in the National Registry of Legal Entities (CNPJ), actually show that the Ipec pollster’s address is Rua Pouso Alegre, in São Paulo. The Lula Institute, formerly known as IPEC, has its headquarters on Paulista Avenue and is even registered under the name “Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Institute”.

The politician and youtuber even deleted the original video and posted a new one, apologizing and admitting to having shared false information about Lula da Silva’s campaign headquarters.

According to the Brazilian press, in the video, which quickly went viral, Gustavo Gayer had even said: “These people are so stupid they can’t even put in a different address, I don’t know, a phantom address. They are so dumb they post it on the internet.”.

The press office of the pollster, Ipec, responded to the case in statements to the AFP agency, guaranteeing that it has no “link” with the Lula Institute, describing the publications circulating on social networks as “fake news.”

conclusion

It is not true that the campaign headquarters of the candidate Lula da Silva is located in the same place as the Ipec polling company. The fake news was shared by a deputy candidate from the same party as Jair Bolsonaro, who even admitted being wrong and posted a video apologizing. Despite having the same initials, the official records of the addresses of the Ipec company and the former IPEC institute (now the Lula da Silva Institute) are different.

WRONG

In the Facebook classification system this content is:

FAKE: The main content claims are factually inaccurate. This option typically matches “false” or “mostly false” ratings on fact-checking websites.

NOTE: This content was curated by The Observer as part of a fact-checking partnership with Facebook.