RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori is only 2 points behind leftist Pedro Castillo in the Peruvian presidential elections next June, according to an opinion poll released Monday by private polling firm CPI.
The poll, conducted between May 6th and 8th in 55 provinces of 22 of Peru’s 24 departments, showed that Castillo maintains the first place, with 34.2%, but Fujimori has closed the gap, with 32% of voters’ support.
Moreover, 18.5% of citizens state that they are thinking of casting a blank or invalid vote, while 15.3% say they are “undecided”.
The CPI poll shows that Castillo maintains a similar position to the last poll conducted by the same company, between April 17th and 20th, which gave him 34.2%. However, Fujimori has experienced a noteworthy increase, from 23.1% last month to 32% in May.
PREFERENCES BY REGION
Fujimori maintains her main voter base in Lima, where she gets 39% of the votes, while Castillo is preferred by 25.9% in the capital, although voting intentions in the interior of the country are favorable to him, with 38.8%, compared to his opponent’s 28%.
Furthermore, the ultra-left Peru Libre party candidate confirms his main electoral strength in the rural interior of the country, with 43.6% and a predominance in the southern highlands, with 60.5%, and central highlands, with 53.2%.
On the other hand, the leader of the authoritarian right-wing party Fuerza Popular has a slight advantage in urban areas, with 28.8% in the interior of the country, and her main stronghold in the northern coast, with 36.7%.
TREND IN THE POLLS
This CPI poll confirms Fujimori’s upward trend in citizen preferences, since another survey released on Sunday by the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP) indicated that the candidate had advanced 8.5 points with respect to the previous month and currently has 30% of voter preferences.
Although the IEP reported 36.2% of voting intention for Castillo, this result implied a five-point drop for this candidate with respect to the previous poll conducted last April.
The CPI poll involved 1,600 people and has an error margin of 2.5% and a 95% reliability level. The IEP poll was conducted between May 3rd and 6th among 1,218 people nationwide, with an error margin of 2.8% and a 95% reliability level.
Castillo and Fujimori came in first and second place, respectively, in the general elections held on April 11th and will contest this June 6th in a presidential run-off election to which some 25.4 million Peruvians have been called to vote.