Brazilian environmentalist upends presidential election race

By Anthony Boadle BRASILIA (Reuters) – Environmentalist Marina Silva could defeat President Dilma Rousseff if Brazil’s October election goes to a second-round run-off, according to a new poll that saw the challenger entering the race in second place. Silva, now with support of 21 percent of voters, has drawn almost three times more backing than the late center-left candidate Eduardo Campos who she is poised to replace in the race after his death last week in a plane crash. Support for Rousseff in the Datafolha poll released on Monday was unchanged at 36 percent and remained at 20 percent for centrist and market favorite Aecio Neves. Silva, who won 19.3 percent in the 2010 presidential election as the Green Party candidate, is also statistically tied with Neves, who would lose a runoff against Rousseff by eight percentage points if he went through, the poll showed.