Marina Silva

Economy, corruption key to Brazil presidential runoff

Anadolu Agency

SÃO PAULO — The remaining two candidates in the Brazilian presidential race met with campaign teams on Monday to plan negotiations to secure rivals’ supports and redraw political battle lines ahead of the runoff on 26 October.

Sunday’s first-round vote saw incumbent and leftist Workers’ Party candidate President Dilma Rousseff take 41.5 percent of valid votes, but center-right Brazilian Social Democracy Party candidate and market favorite Aécio Neves performed unexpectedly well, finishing in second with 33.6 percent, forcing a fourth consecutive runoff between the two parties.

Former environment minister Marina Silva, running for the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), placed third with 21 percent of support, meaning elimination from the race.

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Brazil elections set for runoff between Rousseff, Neves

Anadolu Agency

SÃO PAULO — Brazil’s presidential election will go to a second round between incumbent president Dilma Rousseff and centre-right candidate Aécio Neves, the country’s Supreme Electoral Court told the Anadolu Agency (AA) on Sunday evening.

With nearly all of the country’s electronic votes counted, none of the 11 candidates can now reach the required 50-percent threshold, and a second round will be held on 26 October.

Rousseff, the Workers’ Party (PT) candidate who is seeking a second four-year term, took 41.5 percent of votes in Sunday’s presidential election by 10pm in Brasília — a first round she had been expected to win.

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Polls open in Brazil for crunch presidential elections

Anadolu Agency

SÃO PAULO — Polls have opened in Brazil where tens of millions of voters have begun casting their ballots across Latin America’s largest country, in one of the most unpredictable and exciting Brazilian presidential elections in a generation.

Polling stations opened their doors at 08:00 Brasília time (11:00 GMT) and will close soon after at 17:00 (20:00 GMT).

Some 142.8 million people are eligible to take part in the vote, which is mandatory for those aged between 18 and 70.

As well as voting for one of 11 candidates vying for the presidency, Brazilians will also be asked to elect deputies, senators, state governors and state-level legislators.

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Final Brazil polls: Neves edges out Silva to face Rousseff

Anadolu Agency

SÃO PAULO — A final slew of polls released on Saturday ahead of Sunday’s first-round vote of the Brazilian presidential elections has predicted a comfortable win for leftist incumbent president Dilma Rousseff, but one that falls short of the 50 percent required to avoid a runoff.

The polls predicted the Workers’ Party candidate would also win the highly-likely second round.

However, the results suggested it would now be fought against centre-right Social Democracy Party candidate Aécio Neves, who has pulled ahead of former environment minister Marina Silva for the first time since she entered the race mid-August, in a final twist ahead of the first-round vote.

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Brazil elections: No knockout blows in final first-round TV debate

Anadolu Agency

SÃO PAULO — A fiery, final televised debate among Brazil’s top seven presidential candidates on Thursday night resulted in accusations of corruption and economic mismanagement, but lacked the substance or convincing attacks that could seriously sway Sunday’s vote.

The Globo TV network debate, traditionally regarded as the most important of the televised clashes, was the last chance for the hopefuls to lure undecided voters ahead of the 5 October first-round vote.

Experts say that although the debate was the most informative yet, no one candidate landed the kind of knockout blow that would dramatically alter the course of the election.

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Brazil elections: Meet the top six presidential candidates

Brazil heads to the polls this Sunday, 5 October, to elect the country’s next president. Some 143 million eligible voters will choose from among 11 candidates, the top three of which are representing broad party coalitions.

If no candidate receives 50 percent of the compulsory vote, a second-round runoff will be held on 26 October between the top two vote-getters.

Meet the six highest-polling candidates, which include Brazil’s incumbent president, Dilma Rousseff, and environmentalist candidate Marina Silva, whose dramatic late as presidential candidate turned the race for the Planalto on its head.

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Rousseff first-round win ‘now possible’ – latest poll

Anadolu Agency

SÃO PAULO — Brazil’s incumbent president Dilma Rousseff could now be on course for a first-round win in next week’s crunch presidential elections, experts said on Friday after a major poll was published.

According to the latest Datafolha election poll ahead of the first-round vote on 5 October, Rousseff has very nearly doubled her first-round lead to 13 points and pulled ahead of her main rival in a runoff scenario.

The Datafolha poll showed 40 percent would vote for Rousseff, presidential candidate for the Workers’ Party, whereas support for Brazilian Socialist Party candidate Marina Silva had dropped to 27 percent.

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Brazil inequality, unemployment buck improving trend

Anadolu Agency

SÃO PAULO — Brazil saw increases in unemployment and inequality in 2013, according to new official figures released Thursday by the country’s office of national statistics, the IBGE.

Brazil’s Gini Index, a measure of inequality by income distribution, rose from 0.496 in 2012 to 0.498 in 2013, where ‘zero’ represents perfect equality. The increase breaks a years-long downward trend in inequality experienced since 2001, when it was 0.563.

[Important update 19 Sept: The IBGE later announced it had made “serious errors” in some of its calculations, the most noteworthy of which being the Gini Index, which in fact fell to 0.495 in 2013. The IBGE said this still constituted a “stagnation”. The government has called for an inquiry into the errors.]

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