(Transcript from SBS World News Radio)
Incumbent president Dilma Rousseff has won the most votes in the first round of Brazil's presidential election but faces a run off against centre right candidate Aecio Neves.
Pending a final count, Ms Rousseff appears to have secured 41 per cent of the vote, to Mr Neves's 35 per cent.
Environmentalist Marina Silva won 22 per cent.
Biwa Kwan has more.
(Click on the audio tab above to hear the full report)
All along, it has been described as Brazil's closest election in a generation.
Under the country's compulsory voting system, more than 142 million voters at home and overseas had their say.
Along with a president, voters selected 27 state governors, more than 500 congressmen and women, more than a thousand regional politicians and one third of the senate.
Voters cited corruption, social welfare programs and the economy as their key concerns.
"Security issues are always an issue in Brazil, but the economic issue right now is what's moving the election." ... "I guess corruption. We are talking about the -- actually, forget about that, just corruption." (laughs) ... "I think it's very important to have a chance to change the government. I think it's many years with the same group, and I don't think it's good for Brazil. I think the security's very important."
It has been a campaign of twists and turns worthy of a Brazilian telenovela, with the frontrunner changing a number of times in the last month.
Early in the campaign, Ms Rousseff was expected to win outright.
That changed with the death of a main challenger, Socialist Eduardo Campos, which boosted support for his successor, Marina Silva.
During the campaign, Ms Rousseff was keen to depict the election as a choice between keeping or breaking with the government's popular social welfare program.
(Translated) "I believe that a program like Bolsa Familia cannot be just a pilot program, because a pilot program in Brazil is one which reaches some 5 million people. A program which ceases to be a pilot reaches 56 million people."
Ms Rousseff became Brazil's first woman president in 2010.
Her past 18 months in office have been overshadowed by recession, corruption scandals and protests over the cost of the World Cup amid rising costs in public services.
Ms Rousseff has tried to distance herself from corruption investigations into the state-owned oil company Petrobras.
But Marina Silva did not let go of the issue in the days leading up to the election.
(Translated)"Overcome corruption, give transparency -- these should be the actions of the government so that never again should any Brazilian feel they have been cheated by the director of Petrobras, who took billions of reais from Petrobras."
Aecio Neves, from the Brazilian Social Democracy Party, has run a campaign focused on economic issues.
(Translated) "I believe that we have the best conditions to beat the Workers' Party in the second round of voting and, beyond that, to give Brazil an efficient government, a government which leads, which has experience to deal with the great economic chaos we are faced with, a government capable of dealing with our social issues."
Analysts say the election, in some ways, has been a referendum on Ms Rousseff's 12 years in office.
Dr Sean Burges is with the Centre for Latin American Studies at the Australian National University.
"There's a bit of angst and ennui with the dominant parties. People are getting a little fed up with the PT, the worker's party of Dilma, which has been in power for 12 years now. And they're not altogether sure they trust the PSDB, which is Aecio Neves's party, which was in power the previous eight years."
The executive producer of SBS Radio's Portuguese language program, Beatriz Wagner, is a journalist from Brazil.
She says much was made of Marina Silva's background as she attempted to become the first black woman from a poor background to be elected president of the country.
But Beatriz Wagner says, despite what the newspapers were reporting in the lead up to the election, it would be a mistake to underestimate the support base for Ms Rousseff.
"If you read Brazilian media, the mainstream media, you have the image that Dilma is doing badly, that the population is against her. I think it's fair to say that the mainstream media is against the government, in general terms. And when you look at the polls, she has a very strong support. And this is because the Workers' Party government, I believe, in those 12 years in power, they took out of poverty so many people, and they changed legislation, and the salaries were increased a lot, so the majority of the excluded people in Brazil, they know the difference."
The second round vote between Dilma Rousseff and Aecio Neves will be held on October the 26th.
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