page_title: Dilma Rousseff
section_title: Popularity
hierarchical_section_title: Dilma Rousseff / Presidency (2011–2016) / Popularity
caption_attribution_description: Español: Los cuatro Presidentes de los cinco países miembros del Mercosur&#160;: Venezuela, Brasil, Uruguay y Argentina -(Paraguay se encuentra suspendido del bloque por la destitución del ex Presidente Fernando Lugo).
context_page_description: Dilma Vana Rousseff is a Brazilian economist and politician who served as the 36th president of Brazil, holding the position from 2011 until her impeachment and removal from office on 31 August 2016. She was the first woman to hold the Brazilian presidency and had previously served as Chief of Staff to former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from 2005 to 2010.
  The daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant, Rousseff was raised in an upper middle class household in Belo Horizonte. She became a socialist in her youth and after the 1964 coup d'état joined left-wing and Marxist urban guerrilla groups that fought against the military dictatorship. Rousseff was captured, tortured, and jailed from 1970 to 1972.
  After her release, Rousseff rebuilt her life in Porto Alegre with Carlos Araújo, who was her husband for 30 years. They both helped to found the Democratic Labour Party in Rio Grande do Sul, and participated in several of the party's electoral campaigns. She became the treasury secretary of Porto Alegre under Alceu Collares, and later Secretary of Energy of Rio Grande do Sul under both Collares and Olívio Dutra.
context_section_description: Rousseff maintained a majority approval rating throughout her first term. In late March 2013, her government was approved by 63% of Brazilians, while her personal approval rating was at 79%, a personal high. Rousseff was also cited as the preferential candidate for 58% of the voters in the 2014 presidential election, in which she was reelected. Rousseff's popularity is attributed to popular measures of her government, such as the reduction of the federal tax in the energy bill and the exemption of federal tax in the products of the consumer basket (meat, milk, beans, rice, flour, potatoes, tomatoes, bread, sugar, coffee powder, cooking oil, butter, bananas and apples). The lowering of the overnight rate conducted by the Central Bank of Brazil is also mentioned as a cause for Rousseff's high popularity. This has caused some to consider her "populist", a consideration shared by her predecessor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
  In early 2015, Rousseff's popularity began to decline and in February 2015, a month before the 2015 protests in Brazil began, Rouseff's approval rating dropped 19 points to 23% with 44% disapproving of her. Following 15 March protests, Rouseff's approval rating fell even further to only 13% with a 62% disapproval rating, one of the highest disapproval ratings in the past 20 years of any president.
  In July of the same year, her approval rating reached a new low (9%), while her disapproval rating reached 64%. By late 2015, thousands of Brazilians began to protest, demanding Rousseff's impeachment.
caption: Rousseff (second from left) with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, Uruguayan President José Mujica and Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2012
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