Elections in Peru: Pedro Castillo beats Keiko Fujimori in the first ballot for the poll

Leftist Pedro Castillo surpasses his intention to vote right-hander Keiko Fujimori for the June 6 presidential election in Peru, according to a poll released this Sunday by a local television station, the first since the general elections a week ago.

Castillo, a rural school teacher, focuses 42% voting intention, while Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori, receives a 31% preferences, says the Ipsos survey.

16% would vote blank or null and 11% did not specify their electoral option during the consultation, indicated the program Fourth power of Television America who spread the poll.

Ipsos interviewed 1,204 people on April 15 and 16, with a 2.8% margin of error.

Keiko, 45, defends the free market while Castillo, 51, advocates an active economic role for the state, including with nationalizations. However, the two candidates agree on certain points with conservative positions: they are anti-abortion, they defend the traditional family, they do not give importance to the rights demands of the LGTBI community and they reject the gender approach. in schools.

In a polarized campaign, the negative perception of the candidates plays a determining role. In this plane, 55% of those polled said they would never vote for Keiko Fujimori, while 33% said they would never support Castillo.. The rural teacher also has a “strong vote” (of those who are convinced to support him) greater than that of his rival.

According to the territorial perimeter, support is only reversed in Lima, where Fujimori receives 43% of preferences and Castillo reaches 26%, while inside the country, support for the candidate reached 51% and Fujimori 24%.

The survey details that great support that Castillo receives inside the country, where it receives support of 47% in urban areas and 60% in rural areas. Fujimori, the Fuerza People’s Party candidate, receives 26% support in urban areas and 20% in rural areas.

By region, Castillo also shows strong support, as it enjoys support of 41% in the north, 68% in the center, 58% in the south and 45% in the eastern Amazon. Fujimori, for its part, is supported at 30% in the north, 22% in the center, 17% in the south and 29% in the east.

Commenting on the outcome of the investigation, Ipsos director Alfredo Torres said that although there are seven weeks left before the second electoral round, “it is true that This is a significant difference, because on other occasions there has not been so much difference“. In previous polls contested by Fujimori (2011 and 2016), he had never been favored in the first polls after the general vote, but he had never been so far behind. In both campaigns, against Ollanta Humala and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, he managed to overcome the difference in the polls and then fell back to second place.

“Keiko Fujimori is having a hard time if he wants to turn the tables, he started with the score against,” Torres said before reiterating that “we have to be careful”, but we have to recognize that the gap is big. “Castillo’s advance is no longer limited to the Andean areas, but also to other regions, such as the north of the country, it is a novelty,” he said.

The IPSOS poll was carried out before writer Mario Vargas Llosa, a fierce anti-Fujimorista, gave his support to the right-wing candidate to avoid a victory for the left.

Castillo, candidate of the Peru Free party, leads the first presidential round with 19.09% and Keiko, of Fuerza Popular, escorted him with 13.35%, after having counted nearly 100% of the votes in the election of Sunday, which counted with a record of 18 candidates and no favorites. The vote count for the presidential election is practically finished, but the passage of the two candidates in the ballot must be proclaimed by the national jury of the elections, scheduled for May, according to their boss, Jorge Luis Salas.

The country, in recession due to the pandemic and politically unstable since 2016 – it had three presidents in five days in November – is now heading for a ballot between two candidates located at the antipodes and who together obtained only 32% of the votes. vote in the first round.

Keiko said that if she became president, she would forgive her father, who is serving a 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity and corruption under his government (1990-2000). She herself faces a prosecution request for 30 years in prison in an upcoming trial for money laundering and other charges in the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht scandal.

Political opponents tried to bind Castillo to Venezuela under the administration of Nicolás Maduro. In Peru, there are over a million Venezuelans who have escaped the crisis in that country.

After learning about the poll, Castillo released a video message in which he thanked the people “deeply for their support” and offered that “with this same spirit, with the same loyalty to the people” he will lead in the second round. . “We do not accept to lead a campaign with attacks, low blows, from us they will not have it; We think it is important that, in this scenario, we have to work and politically propose the main proposals of the country ”, he declared.

The candidate added that if he reaches the head of state, his government will be “respectful” of the current Constitution, which proposes to change, “until the people decide by referendum, until it emanates from the people “. And he concluded: “No more poor in a rich country”.

(With information from EFE and AFP)

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