RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil's presidential elections on Sunday are likely to be the closest in a generation, but polls suggest leftist incumbent Dilma Rousseff will secure a second term after a run-off.
Rousseff, who was jailed and tortured as a dissident under the 1964-85 military dictatorship, has over the past month steadily risen in polls that now forecast her winning an October 26 second-round contest.
The second half of August saw the 66-year-old playing catch-up after environmentalist-evangelist Marina Silva took up the baton for the Socialist Party.
Silva, the daughter of impoverished Amazonian rubber tappers, is preaching the need for a "new politics" and wants to become Brazil's first black leader.
Silva was the environment minister in Rousseff's Workers Party (PT) under charismatic former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Silva only entered the race after the Socialist candidate Eduardo Campos was killed in an August 13 plane crash.
But the past month has seen her support slip as Rousseff has gone on the offensive, accusing her rival of wanting to rein back PT welfare programs credited with lifting 40 million Brazilians out of poverty over the past decade.
During campaigning Friday, Rousseff exuded confidence she would defeat Silva and social democrat Aecio Neves, who has closed the gap on Silva in recent days to around three percent, close enough to dream of making a run-off.
"We're counting on it going to a second round," said Rousseff, who dipped in opinion polls after the economy entered recession five weeks ago and after a corruption scandal implicating dozens of politicians -- mainly Rousseff allies -- broke at state-owned oil giant Petrobras.
"We are prepared for the first round and for the second," Rousseff told a rally in Sao Paulo state.
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