Voters in Brazil have re-elected left-leaning President Dilma Rousseff and her Workers Party(PT), giving her a narrow 51 percent victory.

Speaking to her supporters after acknowledging she had won she said her priority in her second term would be political reform along with fiscal discipline.

Rousseff has been in power since 2010 and is popular with poor Brazilians because of her government’s welfare policies.

But both candidates in Sunday’s run-off had made economic growth central to their election campaigns.

In the tightest of contests her rival centrist candidate Aecio Neves of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) took just over 48 percent of the vote.

The former state governor’s support base appears to have been among the more wealthy and middle class Brazilians who liked his pledge to put the economy back on track after four years of low growth.

The election came after weeks of intensive campaigning marked by aggressive accusations on both sides. The presidential race had also been marred by tragedy when Eduardo Campos, a main opposition candidate was killed in a plane crash in August.