Elections in Peru: equality of votes at the exit of the polls …

In technical quasi-equality since the poll has a margin of error of + – 3 points, the right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori would have reached 50.3% of the vote this Sunday against 49.7% for the left-wing unionist Pedro Castle., according to an exit poll by the Ipsos cabinet published at the close of polling stations in Peru. The design office has obviously defined this preliminary result as a “technical link”, considering that the narrow lead is within the survey’s margin of error. The electoral authority has announced that the first official result of the Peruvian presidential elections will be released from 11:30 p.m. local time (1:30 in Argentina). Previous polls had predicted a very close result that could cause a delay of days to know the winner, as happened in the 2016 election.

“We have a statistical tie, within the margin of error, a very close tie. There is no way to declare a winner at the moment.”, said the director of Ipsos Peru, Alfredo Torres placeholder image, on the American channel. With very different messages of unity and plans, Fujimori and Castillo pledged that they would respect the outcome of one of the closest elections in Peruvian history. From its cradle, the Tacabamba district, Castillo called on “personeros and personeras to defend every vote” and the Peruvian people to “take to the streets in peace to be vigilant in the defense of democracy”..

The winner of these elections will receive a country in serious economic and health crisis, because in 2020 it suffered a recession of 11.6% of its GDP and the coronavirus claimed the lives of more than 180,000 Peruvians, making it the country with the highest death rate in the world due to of the pandemic. In addition the new president will have to take urgent action to overcome political instability, in the face of a fragmented Congress, cases of corruption and poor public management.

Castillo focuses its support in rural areas of the interior provinces of Peru, like his native Cajamarca, while Fujimori is the favorite of businessmen and middle class sectors, as well as certain politicians and intellectuals with an anti-Fujimori past, like the Nobel laureate of literature Mario Vargas Llosa. The new president will take office on July 28, the day Peru commemorates the bicentenary of its independence, replacing the interim centrist president Francisco Sagasti, who urged his compatriots “to respect scrupulously the will expressed at the ballot box”.

The election was expected with a close result, after polls from major opinion firms reflected a technical tie with a slight advantage for Castillo until a week ago and for Fujimori in recent days. It would be a case similar to that of the last presidential elections, in 2016, when Pedro Pablo Kuczynski beat Fujimori by 50.12% to 49.88%. This was a difference of only 40,000 votes out of 17 million votes, and the winner could not be declared until several days after election day.

In order to reduce absenteeism and prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the ONPE has installed around 12,000 polling centers (three times the usual number) and extended the hours of access to polling stations, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. local. In turn, the government suspended the travel and vaccination restrictions against covid-19 for Sunday only, and postponed until 11 p.m. the entry into force of the curfew to facilitate voter participation.

More than 997,000 citizens have been registered abroad, where 214 voting centers have been opened. Argentina is the third largest community of Peruvians abroad, with 143,189 citizens eligible to vote, spread across the city of Buenos Aires, La Plata, Córdoba, Corrientes, Mendoza, Rosario and Salta.

Castillo and Fujimori went to the second round with 19.06% and 13.37% of valid votes respectively, with 18.21 percent of blank or null votes and 29.88 percent of absenteeism, according to the official control of the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE). In the first round, 18 presidential candidates clashed, the second highest number in the country’s history, a clear sign of the strong dispersion of the Peruvian vote.