After dramatic campaign, Brazilians all set to vote

If anything, Dilma Rousseff is a survivor. The former political prisoner-turned-president approaches the end of her first term having lived through cancer, endured raucous, anti-government protests in 2013, brushed past critics to pull off a successful World Cup, and held onto wide support even as Brazil’s economy sputtered into recession.

Sunday’s presidential election determines the outcome of, perhaps, her most surprising challenge yet: the unexpected rise of Marina Silva, a popular Amazon-born environmentalist who was thrust into the presidential race when a plane crash killed her party’s top candidate.

The twists and turns leading up to Latin America’s largest election have been the sort of drama even writers of the nation’s popular soap operas would have hesitated to invent. How it will end is up to Brazil’s electorate of nearly 143 million people.

‘It’s been the most unpredictable election since the reinstatement of democracy in 1985,’ said Paulo Sotero, director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

Just weeks ago, Rousseff’s chances of survival looked dim, with polls suggesting she and Silva would advance to a runoff vote that Silva was likely to win. But Rousseff fought back aggressively by raising doubts about Silva’s qualifications, and support for the high-flying challenger slipped.

Polls released this week by Brazil’s two leading firms, Datafolha and Ibope, showed Rousseff leading Silva by about 15 percentage points in Sunday’s election, although she appeared to fall short of winning the outright majority she would need to avoid a runoff on Oct. 26.

The two agencies also showed Silva facing a growing challenge from Social Democracy Party candidate Aecio Neves, an economist and former governor of Minas Gerais, Brazil’s second-most populous state, who has strong name recognition. His grandfather, Tancredo Neves, was a widely beloved figure who was chosen to become Brazil’s first post-dictatorship president but fell ill and died before taking office.

Datafolha’s survey published Friday showed Silva and Neves nearly even going into Sunday’s vote, 24 percent to 21 percent, which is a statistical tie given the margin of error of 2 percentage points. A recent Ibope survey had 24 percent for Silva and 19 percent for Neves, also with a 2 percentage point margin of error.

Both polls suggest Rousseff likely would beat either challenger in a runoff.

Voters will cast ballots via electronic machines Sunday and results are expected to be known within hours of poll closing at 5 p.m. local time. Voting is mandatory for Brazilians aged 18 to 70, and optional for those as young as 16 or over 70. Organizers dispatched some 530,000 voting devices to reach even far corners of the country, the fifth-largest in the world.