Rousseff expected to win as Brazil votes

Brazilian President and presidential candidate for the Workers Party, Dilma Rousseff (left) poses with Tarso Genro Governor candidate for Rio Grande do Sul state, Tarso Genro at a polling station in Porto Alegre, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, on October 5, 2014. President Rousseff is expected to win the first round but headed for a likely runoff against one of two challengers promising very different brands of change. FILE PHOTO | AFP 

RIO DE JANEIRO
Brazilians voted on Sunday, with President Dilma Rousseff expected to win the first round but headed for a likely runoff against one of two challengers promising very different brands of change.

The telenovela-like drama of the race — a candidate’s death in a fiery plane crash, a poor maid’s rise to the cusp of the presidency, a seedy oil scandal — continued down to the wire.

On the eve of the vote, Marina Silva, the environmentalist whose meteoric rise once looked unstoppable, slipped to third place behind business-world favorite Aecio Neves, a social democrat.

Silva, a former environment minister, is bidding to become Brazil’s first “poor, black president.” But opinion polls show Rousseff enjoying a double digit first round lead and defeating either of her rivals by around five percent in a second round.

Surveys gave Silva, a one-time maid and rubber-tapper, between 21 percent and 24 percent of the vote, trailing Neves (24-27 per cent) and Rousseff (41-46 percent).

CORRUPTION SCANDALS
Rousseff, whose bid for a new term has been hampered by a recession-hit economy and corruption scandals, said she fully expected a run-off after casting her vote in the southern city of Porto Alegre some 45 minutes after polling began.
“I have been working on the hypothesis of there being two rounds right from the start of the elections,” she told reporters.

The election, the closest in a generation for Latin America’s largest democracy, is widely seen as a referendum on 12 years of government by the PT.

The campaign was upended in August, when then-third-place-candidate Eduardo Campos of the Socialist Party died in a plane crash.

Silva, his 56-year-old running mate, joined the race promising a “new politics” for Brazil.

MISSTEPS
She quickly shot into the lead. But a series of missteps, including flip-flopping on gay marriage, saw her lose momentum.

With a huge Workers Party (PT) machine behind Rousseff and support from still popular former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who started the extensive welfare reforms that have lifted some 40 million people out of extreme poverty over the past decade, the incumbent is expected to win another four years.

In PT stronghold Sao Bernardo dos Campos, where Lula was to vote, party diehard Juno Rodriguez Silva, 71, insisted “We’re all working for her — she can do it in one round.”

“I think the vast majority of Brazilians who want to see a change in Government are now rallying around Aecio,” said Marcos Troyjo, a Brazilian political scientist from Columbia University.

“The momentum is definitely going his way at the eve of the first round. If he indeed makes it to the run-off, it will be a close call.’’