Dilma Rousseff edges ahead in polls as Brazilians vote for new president
Polls predict president will not win election outright but would beat Silva or Neves in run-off
If anything, Dilma Rousseff is a survivor.
The former political prisoner-turned-president approaches the end of her first term having lived through cancer, endured raucous, anti-government protests in 2013, brushed past critics to pull off a successful World Cup, and held on to wide support even as Brazil's economy sputtered into recession.
The country's presidential election, which was being held yesterday, will determine the outcome of, perhaps, her most surprising challenge yet: the unexpected rise of Marina Silva, a popular Amazon-born environmentalist who was thrust into the presidential race when a plane crash killed her party's top candidate, Eduardo Campos, in August.
The twists and turns leading to Latin America's largest election have been the sort of drama even writers of the nation's popular soap operas would have hesitated to invent. How it will end is up to Brazil's electorate of nearly 143 million people, with preliminary results are expected this morning Hong Kong time.
"It's been the most unpredictable election since the reinstatement of democracy in 1985," said Paulo Sotero, director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington.