Brazilians will vote Sunday in elections that will decide the successor to popular outgoing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, dpa reported.
Polling stations in most of Brazil are to open at 1100 GMT and close at 2000 GMT. An estimated 135 million Brazilians, of a total of more than 190 million, are registered to vote.
Lula's anointed successor, Dilma Rousseff, is favoured to win Sunday's election. Rousseff, 62, Lula's former chief of staff, is the candidate of the ruling Workers' Party (PT) although she has never before stood for public office.
Recent opinion polls show that she is likely to get an absolute majority, but enough to avoid a runoff. If she does so, she would surpass her mentor Lula, who lost three presidential elections and won the other two in the second round of voting.
Rousseff's main rival from eight other candidates is Jose Serra, 68, of the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB). The former governor of Sao Paulo state, the most powerful in the country, started the campaign as the favourite but lost ground as Lula actively campaigned for Rousseff.
Rousseff told the German Press Agency dpa in an email interview earlier this week that, if elected, Brazil will insist on Lula's "new idea of geopolitics," prioritizing South-South diplomacy without distancing itself from northern giants like the United States, the European Union and Japan.
The leftist Rousseff, 62, who had guerrilla training in her youth, said: "Brazil's new political relationship with the world is very important. We have done much more than just diversify trade partners."
She told dpa that, "We have broadened and diversified relations with strategic thinking, with a new idea of geopolitics. A new perception of relations with emerging countries, like China, India, South Africa or Russia. That was how Brazil secured the place it now holds in the world."
On Sunday, Brazilians will also elect all 513 members of the lower house of Congress and 54 of their 81 senators, as well as the governors of all 26 states and the federal district of Brasilia.