Brazilian president to be reelected in second round: poll

Brazilian incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from the Workers Party (PT) will win the second round of presidential elections scheduled for Oct. 29, polls said on Monday.

Fabiano Santos, political analyst from the Rio de Janeiro University Research Institute, said there is room for good and bad news to affect the final results during the campaign, which will begin on Wednesday.

Though Lula failed to win Sunday's election, there is a small margin between the votes he netted and the votes needed to clinch an outright victory, Santo said.

However, it is possible for Lula to gain the votes cast for the other two candidates who failed in the first round, he added.

The opposition candidate Geraldo Alckmin has benefited from an anti-Lula sentiment that has grown due to the scandals involving PT members, but the influence has now passed and is unlikely to affect other groups of voters, said the analyst.

Lula, Brazil's first working-class president, failed to garner over 50 percent of the votes needed to grip an outright victory in the first round, setting up a runoff against opposition candidate Geraldo Alckmin.

Alckmin, grasped 41.58 percent of the votes, trailing Lula by only seven percentage points in Sunday's vote.

Source: Xinhua