Brazilians narrowly voted leftist President Dilma Rousseff back into office yesterday for a second term after a bitter election campaign that split Latin America´s biggest economy largely between the poor north and richer south.
Rousseff, Brazil´s first woman president, went into the run-off as slight favorite — despite overseeing economic recession — and defeated center-right challenger Aecio Neves by three million ballots for a vote share of 51.6 percent after 99 percent of the count.
The 66-year-old daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant businessman immediately vowed to work for political reform through dialogue and to give Brazil the change she said she recognized voters wanted.