Brazil

Photo-Paulo Whitaker/Reuters

SÃO PAULO—This year, for the first time in Brazil’s history, two women—incumbent President Dilma Rousseff and former environment minister Marina Silva—had a serious chance of winning the presidency. Marina, who sought the country’s highest office after the death of her running mate in August, ultimately fell short, coming in third in voting this week behind Dilma and Aécio Neves, who now enter a runoff.

Brazil's presidential race will go to a second round after incumbent Dilma Rousseff fell short of an outright victory in Sunday's election.

Photo-AFP

Some accused it of being predictable and even boring - a presidential election in which the incumbent was all but guaranteed of being re-elected without, perhaps, even the need for a second round of voting.

But then tragedy intervened and changed everything.

We simply do not know what kind of president Eduardo Campos, the presidential candidate for Brazil's Socialist Party who was killed in a plane crash last week, would have been.

AP Photo/Andre Penner, Felipe Dana

When 26-year-old Carol Rossetti started drawing and writing about things that bothered her, she had no idea people on opposite corners of the world would feel the same.

Her sketches of women, with accompanying stories, have gone viral in 24 languages and attracted a following of more than 91,000 people on Facebook.

Support for Brazil President Dilma Rousseff has edged higher in the latest polls, following a sharp fall earlier this year, but rising inflation could hurt her prospects.

We invite our users to read the full article published on July 9th 2014.

The poll from the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion, Ibope, and published by O Estado de Sao Paulo shows that 35% spontaneously even before presenting the list of possible candidates, said they would support Rousseff in 2014, which is three times the sum of all other presidential hopefuls vote intention. Likewise the 35% is far ahead of the percentages registered by Brazilian presidents since the return of democracy in 1985 and as now 18 months ahead of the presidential election.