Silva surges in Brazil election race, threatens Rousseff -poll
BRASILIA (Reuters) - A surging Marina Silva has narrowed President Dilma Rousseff's lead in Brazil's presidential race, a new opinion poll showed on Tuesday, paving the way for a likely second-round runoff in which the popular environmentalist looks well-positioned to win.
Silva, who was thrust into the presidential race last week following the death of her party's candidate, has 29 percent of voter support heading into the Oct. 5 vote, according to the survey by polling institute Ibope.
The poll showed Rousseff with 34 percent, down from 38 percent in the previous Ibope survey in early August. The other main opposition candidate, Senator Aecio Neves, had 19 percent support, down from 23 percent in the last Ibope poll.
In a likely second-round runoff on Oct. 26 between the top two vote-getters, Silva would defeat Rousseff by a margin of nine percentage points, the poll showed.
Ibope surveyed 2,506 people nationwide between Aug. 23-26. The poll, published on the website of the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
A renowned defender of the Amazon rainforest who placed a strong third in the 2010 presidential election, Silva has upended this year's race since declaring her candidacy last Wednesday. But many political analysts warn that both Rousseff and Neves have plenty of time, along with more powerful and better-funded parties behind them, to counter Silva's rise before election day.
Silva surged 10 percentage points ahead of Neves, the centrist candidate favoured by investors, and now threatens to dislodge the ruling Workers' Party in its toughest election since it won office in 2002, the Ibope poll showed.
A separate poll due to be published on Wednesday by the transport industry lobby CNT will also show Silva surging and support dropping for Rousseff and Neves, the CNT said in a statement on Tuesday.
Analysts say Silva has benefited from sympathy over the tragic death of Eduardo Campos, who had invited her to join his ticket as his running mate, and they will be watching a series of opinion polls this week to see if support for Silva wanes after the initial surge.
Silva is seen as an anti-establishment figure who could restore ethical principles to Brazilian politics and she appeals to voters who are disenchanted with Brazil's main parties. A fervent evangelical Christian, she will also draw votes from this growing religious constituency.
The poll showed Silva stealing support from all candidates, including another evangelical candidate Pastor Everaldo, and drawing uncommitted voters into the election.
The prospect of Silva defeating Rousseff has rallied Brazil's stock market for two weeks, with investors betting on an end to the leftist president's interventionist economic policies, which have undermined business confidence in the once high-flying emerging market economy.
Yet Silva's intransigent style of politics may make it difficult for her to build the coalitions with traditional political parties that she would need to govern Brazil if elected.
Silva's economic platform will be announced on Friday. While her policies remain a mystery, her top adviser, Eduardo Giannetti, has said they will be as orthodox and market-friendly as those of Neves. [ID:nL2N0QO1GH]
Silva met recently with bankers in Sao Paulo and said, if elected, she would mostly delegate economic policy to a respected group of advisers. "I'm not going to try to manage something I don't understand," one banker present quoted her as saying.
(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Todd Benson, Diane Craft and Ken Wills)