By Jeffrey T. Lewis
SÃO PAULO--Brazil's presidential race is headed to a second
round after President Dilma Rousseff won the most votes on Sunday
but failed to clinch the majority she needed to win a second term
outright. The leftist Ms. Rousseff will face the more conservative
Aécio Neves in a runoff on Oct. 26.
The volatile election campaign has been marked by big swings in
polls and the death of a candidate in an August plane crash. With
94% of the vote counted, Ms. Rousseff won 41% compared with 34% for
Mr. Neves. Marina Silva, an environmentalist, took 21%. Ms. Silva
briefly led in polls after joining the race late to replace the
Socialist Party's Eduardo Campos, who died in the crash.
"We're on a roller coaster," said André Cesar, a political
consultant based in the capital, Brasília.
The tight election reflects uncertainty about the path forward
in a resource-rich nation coming to grips with a waning commodities
boom. Just four years ago, Brazil's economy was surging forward at
a 7.5% pace as the boom promised to lift millions from poverty and
speed Brazil's development.
But the economy is undergoing a wrenching economic U-turn.
Brazil slipped into recession this year after four years of
stagnation, and inflation is on the rise. The state-owned oil
company Petróleo Brasileiro SA is mired in alleged embezzlement and
other scandals. Since Ms. Rousseff took office, the real has lost a
third of its value against the dollar and the stock market is down
by 21%.
Underscoring the national anxiety, around a million mostly
middle-class protesters took to the streets last year demanding
better governance. Placards criticized everything from poor
hospitals and schools to corruption and the $11.5 billion price tag
to host the World Cup. Ms. Rousseff's popularity plunged, prompting
predictions that her left-wing Workers' Party was vulnerable to
losing the election after 12 years in power.
"The country has to change," said Salete Lopes, a 69-year-old
from the working-class neighborhood of Tijuca who voted for Mr.
Neves but only decided a few days before the election.
Mr. Neves, a conservative from the more-developed south, was
propelled into the second round by a late surge. After trailing by
20 points in August, he ran a tough campaign to convince
anti-Rousseff voters he was better poised to unseat the incumbent
than Ms. Silva.
The results mark a stunning reversal for Ms. Silva, an activist
who grew up poor in Brazil's Amazon forest. and entered politics
alongside the slain Amazon activist Chico Mendes in the 1980s. She
inspired enormous optimism that her compelling life story could
help her win votes away from Ms. Rousseff among the poor. But her
campaign withered amid organizational problems and a barrage of
negative advertising.
Ms. Rousseff, meanwhile, goes into the second round as the
favorite. A former Marxist guerrilla turned politician, the
66-year-old economist is campaigning to extend her left-wing
Workers Party's 12-year hold on the presidency. She won her first
term in 2010 largely on the popularity of her predecessor, Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva, a founder of the Workers' Party who was
ineligible to run after serving two terms.
Ms. Rousseff is expected to unleash a negative ad campaign
portraying Mr. Neves, who is backed by Brazil's wealthy, as out of
touch with the needs of millions of poor who make up more than half
of the electorate.
"Aécio's problem is that he is obviously an elite and it will be
difficult for him to sell himself as the best person to administer
the economy, and social programs, in a way that helps the poor,"
said Ricardo Ribeiro, a political consultant with MCM Consultores
in São Paulo.
Ms. Rousseff is also seeking to grab a share of voters seeking
change. even though she is the incumbent. One of her campaign
themes is that projects designed to transform the country, such as
new railroads and irrigation projects, will only be completed in a
second term. One of her slogans is: "More Changes, More
Future."
"Brazil has achieved a lot in the past four years, " said
Waldemir Mello, a 53-year-old Rousseff backer in the middle-class
neighborhood of Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro. "I want them to continue
their current projects."
And while many better-off Brazilians are seeking change,
millions of poor Brazilians have benefited from her government's
social-assistance programs and are backing Ms. Rousseff as a
continuity candidate.
During 12 years in power, programs such as Bolsa Familia, which
pays a stipend to poor families to keep children in school, have
greatly expanded social-welfare programs that have helped lift some
36 million from extreme poverty.
Ms. Rousseff "ended hunger in Brazil," said Divino de Oliveira
Bento, a 64-year-old retired electrician who lives in a
working-class are outside Brasilia and voted for Ms. Rousseff.
Loretta Chao in São Paulo, Paul Kiernan in Belo Horizonte and
Will Connors in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this article.
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