Brazilians to choose next president in runoff vote

Campaign stickers of Brazil's President and Workers' Party (PT) presidential candidate Dilma Rousseff and Social Democratic Party (PSDB) presidential candidate Aecio Neves are seen on banisters, in downtown Sao Paulo October 25, 2014. [Photo/Agencies]

RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazilians will on Sunday choose their next president in a run-off vote between incumbent President Dilma Rousseff and her rival Social Democrat challenger Aecio Neves.

The latest poll published by a Datafolha survey on Saturday showed that Neves was running neck-and-neck with Rousseff on the eve of the runoff vote, with the former getting 48 percent against president Rousseff's 52 percent.

However, the survey by the smaller MDA research company released on Saturday showed that Neves led Rousseff in the runoff, with the former getting 45.3 percent voter support against 44.7 percent for Rousseff.

The most convincing proposals for the country's economy recovery could be the key to the race, analysts said.

The International Monetary Fund earlier this month cut its 2015 growth forecast for Brazil by 0.6 percentage points to 1.4 percent and lowered its 2014 growth forecast to 0.3 percent from 1.3 percent.

Neves said the current government led by President Dilma Rousseff has abandoned the so-called "macroeconomic triad" of monetary, fiscal and exchange rate discipline that Brazil put in place in the mid-1990s and reinforced in the following decade.

Neves has pledged to bring inflation below the 4.5-percent target in midterm from the current rate of nearly 6.4 percent, and take such measures as austerity and tax reforms.