Jonas Pereira / Agência Senado / CC BY 2.0

On Sunday, Brazilians returned to the polls for the second-round runoff elections—for president and governors in 14 states. Because Brazil now has four time zones, the presidential election tally was released after 8 p.m. Brasília time. However, the results of the gubernatorial elections were released before 8 p.m. The campaign leading up to the runoff had a much hyped up ending. On Friday, Veja magazine published a bombastic cover story, which revealed some of the recent plea bargaining testimony by the money changer Alberto Youssef to the Federal Police in Curitiba. Youssef has been in a Federal Police lock-up since March. Youssef said "The Planalto knew everything" [about the Petrobras corruption scandal]. The police interrogator then asked, "Who in the Planalto?" And Youssef replied, "Lula and Dilma." However, Youssef offered no concrete proof to back up his statement (so far), but the insinuation was headlined in Veja's eight-page story. That Friday evening, TV Globo conducted the last live presidential debate at 10:30 p.m. Because the Veja story "broke" on the Internet on Thursday evening, Dilma's campaign had enough time to reorganize her last television commercials on Friday and incorporate a tirade against the magazine's last-minute attempt to influence the election. As might be expected, Aécio Neves' opening question in the debate was about the Veja story. When the vote tally was complete, President Dilma Rousseff was re-elected by a 3.28-point margin with 51.64 percent of the valid vote. Neves received 48.36 percent, the best performance by a PSDB candidate since 2002. She won 15 states, and he won 12. With the exception of the states of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, this result produced an acute North-South division—Dilma won in the Northeast and North, while Neves won in the South, Southeast and Central-West regions. This division was also along a "rich-poor" regional division. The results of the 2010 election were similar. Regarding the 14 runoff elections for governor, five states had reversals of the first round results. In the nine runoff elections in 2010, there were only two reversals. Including those 13 governors elected in the first round, the PMDB elected seven, the PT and PSDB elected five each, and the PSB had three. The PDT and PSD elected two governors each, and the PP, PCdoB, and PROS one each. Of the 18 governors who ran for re-election in 2014, 12 were re-elected. In these 2014 runoff elections, two states (Acre and Pará) were very close, with less than a three-point spread. This was the first time the PCdoB (the Communist Party of Brazil) elected a governor. The only woman elected governor in 2014 was Suely Campos (PP) in Roraima. Ten days before the first round, she replaced her husband, Neudo Campos, who had his candidacy rejected by the election courts because he was deemed a ficha suja (had "dirty" court records). She led the first round and was elected with 54.85 percent of the second round valid vote.