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Communist candidate Pedro Castillo is currently 11 points ahead of right-wing Keiko Fujimori, his rival in the second round of Peru’s presidential elections to be held on June 6, according to a poll released this Sunday.
The poll, carried out by Ipsos and published by the local channel América Televisión, pointed out that when asked the question “if tomorrow were the second presidential round”, 42 % of the citizens said they would vote for Castillo and 31 % for Fujimori.
In addition, 16% assured that they would leave their vote blank or annul it, while 11% did not specify their preference.
Communist dominates in the country’s inland
According to the territorial scope, support is reversed in Lima, where Fujimori receives 43% of the preferences and Castillo 26%, while in the interior of the country, support for the candidate reaches 51% and for Fujimori 24%.
The survey details the great support received by Castillo, candidate of the Peru Libre party, in the interior of the country, where he has 47% support in urban areas and 60% in rural areas.
Fujimori, the Popular Force party candidate, receives 26 % support in the urban interior and 20% in rural areas.
By regions, the communist also shows solid support, with 41 % in the north, 68 % in the center, 58 % in the south and 45 % in the eastern Amazon.
Fujimori, on the other hand, is supported by 30 % in the north, 22 % in the center, 17 % in the south and 29 % in the east.
The Ipsos poll, which was carried out between April 15 and 16 among 1,204 people and has a margin of error of 2.8 %, added that 67 % of those surveyed have already decided their vote, 29% are not yet “informed enough to decide” and 4 % do not specify their position.
The gap is wide
Commenting on the results of the poll, the director of Ipsos, Alfredo Torres, affirmed that although there are seven weeks to go until the second electoral round “it is true that it is an important gap, because on other occasions there has not been such a big difference.”
“Keiko Fujimori has an uphill struggle: if she wants to turn the game around, she has started with the score against her,” Torres commented before reiterating that “we must be cautious”, but it must be recognized “that the gap is wide.”
“All this could change in the course of other weeks,” he said after commenting that the poll was taken before Nobel-Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa asked his compatriots to vote for Fujimori on Saturday, considering her “the lesser evil” in the face of Castillo’s ultra-left tendency.
The writer’s position, Torres added, “could have some influence in some sector of the electorate”, although the upper and middle classes of the country “are more in favor of Keiko Fujimori” and the economically lower classes are opting for Castillo.
“Castillo’s advance is no longer limited to the Andean zones, but also to other regions, such as the north of the country, that is a novelty”, he added.
Torres also said that a third of the citizens “could still lean towards one or the other” candidate and that this poll “is a first snapshot of how this campaign for the second round begins” after the general elections of April 11, which determined the runoff between Castillo and Fujimori.
