Brazil's Rousseff and Neves locked in even race for president: poll

[Brasilia] President Dilma Rousseff and challenger Aecio Neves are locked in a tight battle for votes ahead of the Oct 26 runoff to Brazil's presidential election, a poll published on Wednesday said.

Mr Neves has 45 per cent of voter support against 43 percent for Ms Rousseff, the surveys by the Ibope research firm showed, the same 2 percentage point gap found by the previous poll six days ago. The difference is within the poll's margin of error and statistically insignificant.

Excluding undecided voters, spoiled and blank survey responses, Mr Neves had 51 per cent against 49 per cent for Rousseff in Wednesday's polls, the same as last week.

Ms Rousseff won the first-round vote on Oct 5 by 41.6 per cent of the votes cast to 33.6 per cent for Neves, a difference of 8 million votes. Mr Neves was endorsed on Sunday by environmentalist Marina Silva who placed third with 22 million votes.

Ibope interviewed 3,010 voters Friday through Wednesday in a poll commissioned by the Globo media group. The poll's margin of error is 2 percentage points. REUTERS