BRAZIL: PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION GOES TO SECOND ROUND BETWEEN PRESIDENT LUIZ INACIO LULA DA SILVA AND GERALDO ALCKMIN.

Incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva failed to win 50% of the vote in Brazil's Oct. 1 election, meaning he will have to run in a second round against top opposition candidate Geraldo Alckmin. Lula won about 48.6% of the vote and Alckmin won about 41.6%, while two former members of Lula's Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) who had split with his party took almost 10% of the remaining votes. Congressional elections cast out legislators implicated in one high-profile scandal, while legislators implicated in another corruption scheme generally were returned to office. Other key outcomes from the federal election included: opponents to the PT will command the majority in the Congress, with the Partido da Frente Liberal (PFL) gaining the largest increase in the number of seats; and Jose Serra, along with Alckmin a member of the Partido da Social Democracia Brasiliera (PSDB) and the ex-mayor of Sao Paulo, won the governor's race in the superpopulous state.

Lula's drive to win first round falls 1.4% short

After Sao Paulo state Gov. Alckmin won much more of the vote than early opinion polls had forecasted, press outlets portrayed the result as a big win for the PSDB candidate. But dissident ex-PT member Heloisa Helena may have been just as much a factor in keeping Lula from the majority he needed. Helena, a nurse, professor, and senator of Alagoas state, co-founded the Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (PSOL) after the PT expelled her for failing to keep party discipline. The leftist senator has been an unyielding critic of Lula's embrace of fiscally conservative policies and was a prominent face during corruption investigations and impeachment proceedings against Congress members who were allegedly bribed to vote for PT legislation.

Regardless of whether it was Alckmin or Helena who, in the words of the Associated Press, "forced" a runoff election, the result disproved a number of opinion polls immediately prior to the vote that predicted a first-round win for Lula.

Alckmin and Lula will face off Oct. 29. The two have begun courting smaller rival parties for support.

The Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE) reported that Lula had won 48.61% of the valid votes cast with 46,662,365 votes, Alckmin won 41.64% or 39,968,369 votes, and Heloisa Helena was in a distant third place with 6.85% (6,575,393 votes). The only other candidate in the race to win more than 1% of the vote was Cristovam Buarque of the Partido Democratico Trabalhista (PDT). Another former member of the PT who left during Lula's presidency, Buarque took 2.64%, or...

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