Brazil votes in tight presidential runoff split along class lines
Brazil votes in tight presidential runoff split along class lines
Source: Reuters - Sun, 26 Oct 2014 06:00 GMT
By Paulo Prada
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Brazilians vote on Sunday in a bitterly-contested election that pits a leftist president with strong support among the poor against a centrist senator who is promising pro-business policies to jumpstart a stagnant economy.
Polls give a slight edge to incumbent Dilma Rousseff, 66, who is seeking a second four-year term. Her Workers' Party has held power for 12 years and leveraged an economic boom to expand social welfare programs and lift over 40 million people from poverty.
But many voters believe Aecio Neves, a 54-year-old former state governor with strong support among upper-middle class and wealthy Brazilians, offers a much-needed change of the guard for Latin America's biggest economy. A decade of growth peaked at 7.5 percent in 2010 and has flagged since Rousseff took office.
Despite acrimonious finger pointing and corruption scandals that have characterized the campaign since a first-round vote on Oct. 5, voters are likely to be divided between those who feel better off than they did before the Workers' Party took office and those who believe its reign, no matter how successful, is no longer producing results.
More:
http://www.trust.org/item/20141026055915-wvm1a/
