‘Insider’ to face president in Brazil’s runoff

In Brazil’s most unpredictable election in decades, it was the candidate with the old-school family pedigree and a calm, presidential air who turned the race upside down with a dramatic late surge.

Stuck in third place and all but written off just a week ago, Senator Aecio Neves, 54, comfortably grabbed second place in the first round of voting on Sunday and will face president Dilma Rousseff in a runoff on October 26.

He now has three weeks to convince voters who backed the candidates eliminated on Sunday that his brand of austere, pro-business policies are the best bet to lift Brazil from three-plus years of economic stagnation.

Neves’ image as an insider from the biggest opposition force, the centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), was a problem throughout much of the campaign.

Voters looking for change after four years of Rousseff’s leftist rule threw their support behind a more novel candidate who promised a break with politics as usual — environmentalist Marina Silva. But when attack ads and Silva’s own unpredictable behaviour hit her campaign, opposition voters went running back into the reassuring arms of Neves.

He won almost 34% of the vote on Sunday. He trailed Rousseff by around 8 percentage points so she is a slight favourite to win the runoff. But recent polls showed more than half of Silva’s supporters would back Neves in the runoff. Silva had around 21% support in Sunday’s election.