A combination photo shows presidential candidates President Dilma Rousseff (L) of the Workers' Party and Aecio Neves of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party gesturing to photographers after voting at their respective voting stations in Porto Alegre (L) and Belo Horizonte, October 5, 2014. Brazil's presidential election is going to a runoff between Rousseff and challenger Neves, the country's electoral authority confirmed on Sunday.STAFF/Reuters
It was a volatile election campaign all the way through, and the results in Brazil's national vote on Sunday stayed true to form. President Dilma Rousseff finished first, but the one-time leading candidate Marina Silva, an outsider environmentalist promising dramatic change, saw her support collapse and finished a distant third.
Ms. Rousseff, whose left-wing Workers' Party has held power for 12 years, will face a run-off vote against the centre-right candidate Aecio Neves, of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, on Oct. 26.
Ms. Rousseff won 41 per cent of Sunday's vote, while Mr. Neves, who until two days before was trailing in third, won 34 per cent.
Ms. Silva, an environmentalist who was a surprise entrant into the race when the the Socialist Party candidate was killed in a plane crash in August, won 21 per cent. For much of the election season, she was at the top of the polls and widely expected to win.
But a series of factors seem to have coalesced to undermine Ms. Silva. She lacked the traditional party structure to back her (while Ms. Rousseff and Mr. Neves had Brazil's two traditional ruling parties behind them). She had an odd-bedfellows coalition of environmentalists, evangelical Christians and millionaire business advisers behind her. She campaigned on an explicit platform of bringing change and providing an outsider's vision – but it seems in the end few Brazilians were willing to take a gamble on the unknown outsider.
"In the end, Brazil is becoming a very boring country. We have the usual parties in the second round for this election," said Oswaldo do Amaral, an expert on party politics with the State University of Campinas. "There was this dream about changing the country, and Marina captured the desire for change, but in the end people thought, 'Well, maybe the change is better with a party that we know, that has been in government in the past.'"
Political candidates of all stripes are routinely referred to by their first names in Brazil.
Ms. Silva was also the target of a hard-hitting media campaign by the Workers' Party to paint her as incapable, an economic conservative cloaked in progressive clothing, and secretly intending to cut the social programs that have lifted millions of people out of poverty during the last decade.
Izabella Rocha, 38, a nutritionist, had intended to vote for Ms. Silva but changed her mind at the 11th hour. "I looked at her and she looked too weak," she said. "I wanted someone to take Dilma out, with new proposals, without the taint of corruption – but I saw that Marina's too weak to be president."
The two opposition candidates did their best through the campaign to paint Ms. Rousseff's government as corrupt, and to blame its mismanagement for a stalled economy where growth will come in at under one per cent this year. But a majority of voters appear to have remained loyal to the Workers' Party and its many pro-poor initiatives.
"Dilma did a lot of things for people who don't have a lot of income," said Crislaine de Oliveira, a 25-year-old secretary, who voted for Ms. Rousseff near her home in the sprawling Rio favela of Rocinha. She cited in particular a program to provide houses for the poor and to extend them credit as having made a difference in her community. "I'm a bit indifferent to the corruption because she managed to make a difference in the country."
Ms. de Oliveira said she managed to buy a house, and that people in her family who couldn't find work got a monthly cash grant that kept them from going hungry. "If she achieved these things, I'm not going to change what is certain for someone I don't know."
Mr. Neves, who is an economist and a former governor of the industrial state of Minas Gerais, has had the enthusiastic backing of Brazil's business community in the election so far. He has pledged to reduce inflation, open the economy to competition and cut the deficit through reduced government spending.
Seats in Congress and the Senate as well as governorships were also up for election, with 142 million Brazilians eligible to vote. While votes were still being counted late into the evening, the Workers' Party and its coalition appeared to have hung on to power in Congress.
As with much else in this election, the results of the second round are difficult to predict. It is the closest margin between a lead candidate and a runner-up of any election in modern Brazilian history.
Ms. Silva could try to play kingmaker and throw her support to one candidate or the other, but it is not clear that her disparate group of voters would follow.
Prof. do Amaral said the presidency remains up for grabs. Ms. Silva's support will likely be split between the candidates, he said. "It's going to be a very tough second round. Dilma can still lose."