BRAZIL:PRESIDENT LUIZ Inácio Lula da Silva was the big winner in local elections held on Sunday across Brazil, despite a surprisingly low vote for his candidate in South America's biggest city.
Candidates from his ruling Workers' Party or his allies won in 10 of the 15 state capitals decided outright while up to nine he supports went through to compete in a run-off round to be held in three weeks.
President Lula is enjoying unprecedented levels of popularity - approaching 80 per cent in some polls - on the back of a booming economy and his successful social programmes which target assistance to the country's poorest citizens. The local election results will strengthen his hand in deciding who succeeds him in 2010, when he is obliged to step down after two terms in office.
The one setback on the night was in São Paulo, Brazil's biggest city.
Marta Suplicy, the Workers' Party candidate and a possible successor to President Lula, had led the polls throughout the campaign but was pipped to first place by incumbent mayor Gilberto Kassab. Both go through to a run-off round with Mr Kassab now considered the favourite.
In contrast to the setback in the city itself, in the greater São Paulo region, birthplace of the Workers' Party, its candidates polled extremely well.
Across Brazil the movement is projected to increase by 50 percent the number of municipalities it controls.
In Brazil's third-biggest city, Belo Horizonte, the candidate backed by an unlikely alliance of the Workers' Party and the main opposition force, the Social Democrats, topped the poll but failed to win outright on the first round, as had seemed likely at one point.
It was the first time Brazil's two main progressive movements have fought a major political campaign on the same side.
In Rio de Janeiro the surprise on the night was the Green Party candidate forcing his way into the run-off round.
Fernando Gabeira, a former Marxist guerrilla who was involved in the 1969 kidnapping of the US ambassador, is the popular founder of the Brazilian Greens and prominent critic of corruption in Brazilian politics.