Rousseff leads in first official results in Brazil

BRASILIA - Dilma Rousseff, the anointed successor of outgoing Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was ahead in the first official results of Sunday’s presidential election - but not far enough to avoid a run-off vote.

Based on the count of 50 percent of the votes, the centre-left Rousseff, of Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT), had close to 44 percent of the votes to 35 percent of her closest rival, Jose Serra, of the centre-right Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), according to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE).

An exit poll carried out by the private Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics (IBOPE), on the other hand, estimated that Rousseff would get 51 percent of the votes to Serra’s 30 percent. But with a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points, the results were not considered a predictor as to whether Rousseff will escape a runoff Oct 31.

Green Party (PV) candidate Marina Silva was getting 20 percent of the votes, with the remaining six candidates garnering the rest, according to the TSE.

The IBOPE exit poll gave Silva, a former member of the PT and like Rousseff a former minister in Lula’s government, 18 percent of the votes, and she emerged as a likely decider in a potential runoff.

Rousseff’s advantage in the preliminary results was a lot smaller than expected on the basis of pre-election opinion polls, many of which estimated that Rousseff would get over half the votes - the threshold she needs to avoid a runoff against the second-placed finisher.

Analysts noted that Serra’s lead could be due to the fact that votes from southern Brazil, where Serra is strongest, were among the first to be counted.