Voters across Brazil were casting ballots Sunday in the most unpredictable presidential election in decades and the first since the end of an economic boom underpinning the leftist Workers' Party's 12-year rule.
As President Dilma Rousseff seeks a second term, voters are weighing whether the socioeconomic gains of the last decade are enough to reject the candidacies of a popular environmentalist and a pro-business social democrat, who both promise to jump-start the economy after four years of lackluster growth.
Polls show Rousseff as the front runner in a race that is likely to go to a runoff on Oct. 26, following one of the most competitive campaigns since Brazil returned to democracy in 1985. The death of one candidate, the unexpected surge of another, and fierce marketing by Rousseff to claw back into the lead have contributed to a nail-biter election as uncertain as the course of the country itself.
"It really is too close to call," said Rafael Cortez, a political analyst with Tendencias, a consultancy in Sao Paulo. "Volatility and frustration favor opposition candidates, but you don't really have a crisis to topple the government, either."
Rousseff's main rivals are Marina Silva, a hero of the global conservation movement and ruling party defector now with the Brazilian Socialist Party, and Aecio Neves, a senator and former state governor from the centrist party that laid the groundwork for Brazil's economic boom last decade.
At mid-day, voting was proceeding without major problems, from densely populated southern cities to remote Amazon villages.
Rousseff, wearing the Workers' Party's signature red, voted shortly after polls opened in the southern city of Porto Alegre, where she lived and rose in the state bureaucracy in the 1990s. Silva voted in the Amazon state of Acre, where she was born into a family of poor rubber tappers, while Neves cast his ballot in Belo Horizonte, the capital of the southeastern state he governed before serving in Brazil's Senate.
The two opposition candidates, in a last-minute sprint for runner-up, both promise to return to the market-friendly economic policies that critics say Rousseff abandoned, especially strict budget and inflation targets. They also vow to stop meddling with big, state-run banks and companies that have been subject to political intervention and corruption scandals.
After trailing Silva for most of the campaign, Neves may have built up enough momentum to advance to a runoff against Rousseff. Three polls on Saturday showed Neves slightly ahead of Silva.
REUTERS