First round win expected for Rousseff as Brazil votes

Brazilians voted Sunday, with President Dilma Rousseff expected to win the first round but headed for a likely runoff against one of two challengers promising very different brands of change.The telenovela-like drama of the race -- a candidate’s death in a fiery plane crash, a poor maid’s rise to the cusp of the presidency, a seedy oil scandal -- continued down to the wire. On the eve of the vote, Marina Silva, the environmentalist whose meteoric rise once looked unstoppable, slipped to third place behind business-world favorite Aecio Neves, a social democrat. Silva, a former environment minister, is bidding to become Brazil’s first ‘poor, black president.’ But opinion polls show Rousseff enjoying a double digit first round lead and defeating either of her rivals by five percent in a second round. Surveys gave Silva between 21 percent and 24 percent of the vote, trailing Neves (24-27 percent) and Rousseff (41-46 percent).