BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian presidential hopeful Aecio Neves is heading into today’s election with a slight edge over environmentalist Marina Silva in the race to advance to an expected runoff against the incumbent, three new polls showed yesterday.
But on the eve of the vote, it remained unclear who President Dilma Rousseff’s adversary would be in a likely second-round vote later in the month, since the gap between Neves and Silva was within the polls’ margin of error, setting the stage for Brazil’s tightest election in decades.
Just a few months ago, many political analysts were predicting that Rousseff would cruise to re-election despite a weak economy and simmering discontent with the high cost of living and bad public services that triggered massive street protests a year ago. The campaign was upended in August, when Silva was thrust into the race after her Brazilian Socialist Party’s original candidate died in a plane crash. A popular anti-establishment figure, Silva quickly surged in the polls and at one point looked poised to end the leftist Workers’ Party’s 12-year grip on power in Latin America’s largest country.
But an aggressive media blitz by the Rousseff campaign eroded Silva’s popularity with questions about her ability to govern Brazil’s unruly democracy without the backing of traditional parties. The Rousseff campaign also portrayed Silva as a serial flip-flopper backed by a greedy financial elite determined to undo popular social welfare programmes.
Neves, a pro-business senator and former state governor from the centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party, has risen steadily in the polls as Silva’s support deflated. He performed well in the last television debate on Thursday, calmly hammering Rousseff over a multimillion-dollar corruption scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras.
