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Brazilians Head to the Polls as Campaigning on Both Sides Grows Noxious
Brazilians Re-elect Dilma Rousseff as President
(about 4 hours later)
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilians began casting ballots on Sunday in a presidential race between a leftist incumbent who is touting big gains in reducing poverty and a centrist challenger blaming the incumbent for corruption scandals and a sluggish economy.
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilian voters re-elected Dilma Rousseff as president on Sunday, endorsing a leftist leader who has achieved important gains in reducing poverty and keeping unemployment low over a centrist challenger who castigated her government over a simmering bribery scandal and a sluggish economy.
The tumultuous race remained tight until the eve of the vote, and President Dilma Rousseff, whose Workers’ Party has held power for 12 years, appeared to hold a lead over Aécio Neves, a senator for the Social Democrats.
Ms. Rousseff of the Workers Party took 51.4 percent of vote in the second and final round of elections, against 48.5 percent for Aécio Neves, a senator from the Social Democracy party and scion of a political family from the state of Minas Gerais, electoral officials said Sunday night with 98 percent of votes in the country counted.
The influential Datafolha polling company showed Ms. Rousseff with 52 percent support, compared with 48 percent for Mr. Neves, according to a survey released on Saturday night. Still, the poll signaled a technical tie between the two candidates, since the survey, which interviewed 19,318 voters on Oct. 24 and 25, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
While Ms. Rousseff won by a thin margin, the tumultuous race was marked by accusations of corruption, personal insults and heated debates, revealing climbing polarization in Brazil. Mr. Neves surged into the lead this month in opinion surveys, only to be eclipsed by Ms. Rousseff as the vote on Sunday approached.
“I’m going with Dilma because she prioritizes social progress,” said Henrique Vaz, 22, a graphic designer in São Paulo. “Aécio might be better for the economy, but he is too beholden to business interests.”
“People without much money have seen their lives improve during recent years,” said Liane Lima, 62, a secretary in São Paulo who voted for Ms. Rousseff. “I think we should let Dilma finish what she started.”
Electoral authorities were expected to declare the winner on Sunday night after a nationwide electronic system tallied the vote.
Indeed, Ms. Rousseff’s victory reflects broad changes in Brazilian society since the Workers Party rose to power 12 years ago with the election of her predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who chose Ms. Rousseff as his successor to run in the 2010 election and campaigned for her again this year.
The struggle for each vote in the race has been marked by mounting political tension. In one barb epitomizing the acrimony between supporters of the respective candidates, the leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared that Mr. Neves’s campaign was attacking Ms. Rousseff and her supporters “like the Nazis did in World War II.”
Building on an economic stabilization project put in place by the Social Democrats in the 1990s, Ms. Rousseff and Mr. da Silva aggressively expanded social welfare programs, lifting millions of Brazilians out of poverty. Pointing to the popularity of the antipoverty spending, Mr. Neves, the challenger in the race, said he would not scale it back.
Mr. Neves, meanwhile, compared Ms. Rousseff’s campaign strategist to Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. As the vote approached, campaigning on both sides grew more noxious, with personal insults, heated accusations of corruption and even a clash between campaigners on the streets of São Paulo.
But while Ms. Rousseff campaigned largely on her government’s support for poor and working-class citizens, she faced fierce criticism over her economic policies, with Brazil struggling with slow growth throughout her first term and a recession this year. Brazil’s financial markets gyrated wildly throughout the race, reflecting skepticism over her management of the economy.
The rising polarization in Brazil, which has mostly avoided the poisonous political wrangling of neighbors like Venezuela and Argentina, has stunned many voters and contributed to what is arguably Brazil’s most contentious election since the end of authoritarian military rule in the 1980s.
Ms. Rousseff, 66, a former Marxist guerrilla who was imprisoned and tortured by Brazil’s military dictatorship, rejected much of the criticism while emphasizing that she had no plans to shift away from policies involving greater state control over the economy. Still, she signaled openness to shaking up her cabinet, including replacing her unpopular finance minister, Guido Mantega.
“The entire race from start to finish has been one disgrace after another, leaving me revolted,” said Eliete Carvalho, 34, a physical therapist in São Paulo. “I never saw a race like this one. The quality of it was just horrible.”
In addition to facing turbulence in the markets, Ms. Rousseff will deal in her next four-year term with a sprawling scandal involving testimony of bribes and money laundering at Petrobras, the national oil company, which has eroded confidence in the Workers Party. A former high-ranking executive at Petrobras has testified that he channeled bribes to the party and its allies in Brasília.
In the closing days of the race, Ms. Rousseff appeared to pull ahead, suggesting that her government’s emphasis on expanding social welfare programs and keeping unemployment low, even in a sluggish economy, had bolstered her support.
“I always voted for the Workers Party, since I was a teenager, but this government hasn’t done anything different,” said José Abel, 48, who runs a tourist agency in Brasília and voted for Mr. Neves largely out of concern over corruption in Ms. Rousseff’s government. “They’re just the same as other parties now.”
“Life has improved in the community where I live, so I’m voting for Dilma,” said Michele Albuquerque, 34, a manicurist who lives in Rocinha, one of Rio de Janeiro’s largest favelas, or slums. She mentioned rising incomes and better access to health care in recent years. “It’s a clear choice for me: The poor population now has more rights.”
Still, with the unemployment rate remaining near historical lows even during a recession, economic stability seemed to trump corruption as a major issue among voters. Many people who cast ballots on Sunday expressed concern that a change in government could erode welfare benefits which are now a fixture of society.
Mr. Neves is contending that he can pull off an upset, pointing to one poll positioning him ahead of the incumbent. In the last debate of the race on Friday night, he denounced Ms. Rousseff over a news report tying her and Mr. da Silva, the former president and a fellow member of the Workers’ Party, to a vast bribery scheme at Petrobras, the national oil company.
“My life is stable thanks to Dilma’s government,” said Diogo Bernardo, 28, an installer of telephone lines in Rio de Janeiro who voted for Ms. Rousseff, referring to her informally by her first name, as is common in Brazil. “She’s not great, but Aécio would have been worse since he cares less about the rights of working people. I voted for the lesser of two evils.”
Ms. Rousseff reacted angrily, citing corruption scandals in Mr. Neves’s own party and denying any connection to the bribery scheme. She also questioned the objectivity of Veja, the influential magazine that published the report on Thursday. Some supporters in São Paulo vandalized the headquarters of Abril, Veja’s corporate parent, on Friday night.
For weeks the race has had unexpected twists. In August, a plane carrying a third candidate crashed, thrusting his running mate, Marina Silva, a leader of Brazil’s environmental movement, into the running. She surged into the lead, only to be defeated in the first round of voting after failing to find her footing amid a barrage of attack ads.
As the economy entered a recession this year, an opening seemed possible for Mr. Neves, the scion of a political family from Minas Gerais, Brazil’s second-most-populous state, who has vowed to adopt market-friendly policies like looser controls on fuel prices and independence for the central bank.
Even as Mr. Neves and Ms. Rousseff have sought to stress their differences by sparring about corruption and campaign tactics, they retain similar positions on numerous issues.
Both express support for preserving subsidy payments for the poor, state control of giant companies like Petrobras and affirmative-action programs for Brazilians of African descent.
But their differences on economic policy have accentuated certain rifts. Mr. Neves has called on Brazilians to resist Ms. Rousseff’s efforts to assert greater state control over the economy, a plea that resonates among many voters, especially in the middle and upper classes.
“Aécio will lure more foreign companies to Brazil, and that would help the country,” said Luís Otávio Melo, 55, an economist in Rio. “There’s always going to be corruption in any government, but at least with a new administration the thieves will be different.”
The sense of polarization has grown especially acute in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest and wealthiest state, where support for Mr. Neves is strong, and in the country’s poorer regions, like the northeast, where many people rely on government subsidies and Ms. Rousseff enjoys substantial backing.
Whoever wins on Sunday will face the challenge of governing in a political system in which presidents must forge alliances with an array of parties, including some with sharply different ideologies. Brazil’s rising political tension is not expected to make this process any easier.
“The negative aspect of the presidential race sets the stage for the fractious political scene which will emerge on Monday,” said Fernando Rodrigues, a columnist for the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. “The next president will have enormous difficulties in building some kind of consensus.”
