Rousseff falls short of outright win in Brazil election Review

Brazil's presidential election will go to a second round after Dilma Rousseff failed to gain the 50% of votes needed for an outright victory.

With 98% of votes counted, President Lula's former cabinet chief has 47% with Jose Serra trailing on 33%.

The two will contest a run-off vote in four weeks' time.

A strong showing by the Green Party candidate, Marina Silva, who polled 19%, may have cost Ms Rousseff a first-round win."We can confirm there will be a second round in the presidential elections," Ricardo Lewandowski, the president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, told reporters in Brasilia late on Sunday.

Workers Party candidate Dilma Rousseff is the favoured successor to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has completed two terms, and cannot run for a third.

"We are warriors, and we are accustomed to challenges," she said in a speech in Brasilia after the result was announced. "We do well in second rounds."

Ms Rousseff was the front runner for much of the campaign and benefited from Lula's widespread popularity and the country's booming economy.Many analysts believe a scandal involving her directly would be the only scenario under which she could lose a runoff.


Dilma Rousseff is still on course to become Brazil's first woman president, but her face and tone in addressing supporters betrayed her disappointment. Until a week ago, the polls consistently pointed to Dilma scoring a knock-out blow in this first round of voting; now, she faces the uncertainty of four more weeks of campaigning.

What happened? A critical mass of support seems to have fallen away in the days immediately before polling - partly the consequence of a corruption scandal involving a former adviser, and partly the fall-out of a row over Dilma's stance on abortion.

Evangelical Christians reacted badly to reports that the presidential favourite planned to liberalise Brazil's strict abortion law - a claim she denied - and some appear to have shifted their loyalty to the Green Party candidate, Marina Silva, who is herself a devout evangelical Christian.

Marina put in a strong showing in third place and, while not quite a kingmaker, her views on the second round will be influential in determining the result. For now, she is suggesting that Green Party members - with their 19% of the vote - should collectively decide on whether to endorse Dilma, Serra, or neither.

The rather dour Jose Serra will need to up his game after an often confused and lacklustre initial campaign. But four weeks is an eternity in electoral politics, so don't assume that a Dilma victory is a foregone conclusion.