Rousseff Wins Reelection with 51.45% of the Votes

Rousseff, with the Workers Party, and Neves, with the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, had emerged as the top two vote getters in the Oct. 5 first-round election and have slugged it out in one of the tightest presidential races of the past few decades.

Poll results released on Saturday by Datafolha and Ibope, Brazil’s two most highly respected polling firms, showed Rousseff leading Neves by between four and six percentage points, with the incumbent’s voter intent numbers falling and the opposition leader’s rising.

Rousseff had won 41.59 percent of the votes in the first electoral round, compared to 33.55 percent for Neves, and since no candidate obtained a majority Brazilian law mandated a runoff vote between the top two vote-getter.