On Sunday, October 03, 135.8 million Brazilian people eligible to vote, in Brazil and abroad, went to the polls to elect the President of the Republic, state governors, state and federal deputies and senators in the country. The professor Alcides Costa Vaz of International Relations Institute at the University of Brasília (UnB) said in an interview that the international interest in elections in Brazil is the recognition that the country has a greater influence in discussions of global issues, both in the economic and political sphere. On Sunday, October 03, 150 international observers monitored the elections in Brazil.

Alcides Costa Vaz disregarded the idea that the interest in Brazilian elections reflects a concern with some form of authoritarianism, due to a possible continuation of the PT (Workers Party in Brazil) in power. "This was a fear in 2003, also explored in the political campaign, but not confirmed in eight years of the Lula government," he said. According to him, "this is something that comes much more internally, within the dynamics of political campaign," but without international relevance.

Vaz said he believed that, internationally, there would be a surprise with the second round, since Dilma Rousseff (PT) victory in the first round was the trend shown by major research institutes.

The professor estimated that the South American politics in Brazil would suffer a significant change in case of José Serra (PSDB) victory. In his view, there would be an attempt to reduce the importance of Mercosur and economic concessions from Brazil in relation to its MERCOSUR partners would be avoided.
However, he noted that foreign policy is a policy that belongs to the State not to the Government, and it has been characterized by continuity. “I think course corrections would be made, but these corrections would not be sudden,” he added.

Numbers in Brazil
The number of voters is 7.8% higher than the last presidential election of 2006, which makes Brazil the fourth democracy worldwide. Women are the majority of Brazilian voters for the third consecutive time with 51.8% of voters. According to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), the basic profile of the electorate is comprised of women aged between 25 and 34 years.