SAO PAULO -- Brazilians go to the polls today in a second round of voting that will determine whether Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 57, or Jose Serra, 60, will be the next president of the giant South American country.

Following are portraits of the two candidates.

Lula, as he is known in Brazil, is the clear favorite, with opinion polls giving him more than 60 percent of the vote, about twice as much as his rival, AFP reported.

A onetime factory worker who founded the Worker's Party, Lula, 57, has recently moved closer to the political center and dropped the fiery anti-capitalist rethoric that marked his three previous presidential bids.

He campaigned on a platform of profound social change in a country where 54 million people live in poverty, but has also sought to reach out to the financial community, whose adverse reaction to his candidacy plunged Brazil into turmoil.

Lula's choice of industrialist Jose Alencar of the center-right Liberal Party as a running mate sent a strong message to the Brazilian business community, which has gradually warmed to the former trade unionist.

Lula, who campaigned in 1989 on a promise to default, is now saying financial agreements would be respected and monetary stability maintained.

Even his appearance is more polished now that he has taken to wearing suits, trimmed his beard, and had his teeth redone for a more photogenic look.

Yet his style and background set him far apart from the impeccably coiffed President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a polyglot who has gained international recognition for his political and, before that, academic work.

A former metal worker who never finished high school, Lula has had little international exposure.

He was born in October 1945, of impoverished parents in the depressed northeast of Brazil.

He got his first job as a metal worker at the age of 14. A trade unionist and strike leader, he came to symbolize opposition to the military dictatorship in the 1970s and early 1980s. He founded the Worker's Party in 1980.

In 1986, he was elected to congress, and three years later, he launched his first bid for the presidency. He tried again in 1994 and in 1998 without success, losing both times to Cardoso.

Jose Serra, an austere U.S.-educated economist largely favored by financial markets, is struggling against the odds to become president of Brazil, with opinion polls placing him more than 30 points behind his rival.

Serra, 60, is widely seen as the candidate of the status-quo, a perception likely to have worked against him at a time when most of Brazil's 115 million voters are clamoring for political and social change.

A one-time leftist who moved to the center, Serra was hand-picked by his close friend Cardoso to run for the ruling center-right the Brazilian Social Democratic Party.

Before he launched his campaign, Serra was Cardoso's Health Minister, credited with forcing pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of aids medicine in the developing world.

The son of Italian immigrants, Serra was born in Sao Paulo on March 19, 1942. He went into exile after a 1964 military coup when he was a leftist student leader. He studied economy in Chile and later at Cornell University, in the United States.

Serra was briefly an economic consultant for the Chilean government, and sought refuge at the Italian Embassy after the 1973 military coup in Santiago. He spent six months holed up at the diplomatic mission.

Serra later traveled to the United States and spent two years as a visiting scholar at Princeton University, returning to Brazil in 1978 -- but was prevented from running for congress since his political rights had been suspended by the dictatorship.

Eventually Serra was elected in 1986, one year after civilian rule was restored, and was elected senator in 1994.

Cardoso made Serra planning minister in 1995 and health minister in 1998.