LIMA: Right-wing lawmaker Keiko Fujimori has a thin edge over left-wing Ollanta Humala and the two candidates are virtually tied a week before Peru's June 5 presidential election, two polls showed on Sunday.
Fujimori had 50.5 percent of the vote while Humala, a former army officer, had 49.5 percent when null and spoiled ballots were excluded from a mock nationwide vote organized by Ipsos and published in the newspaper El Comercio.
The survey of 1990 people was conducted May 21-27 and has a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points.
In another mock vote, by CPI, Fujimori, the daughter of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori, had 51.8 percent and Humala had 48.2 percent. CPI surveyed 2,800 people May 25-28 and its margin of error was 1.85 percentage points.
The two candidates in the polarized race will face each other in a televised debate on Sunday that pollsters say could be crucial as the tone of the race becomes increasingly heated and based on personal attacks.
To woo centrists, Humala, 48, has tried with limited success to distance himself from his former political mentor, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and recast himself as a moderate like Brazil's popular former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Humala, who once led a bloodless insurrection to demand the elder Fujimori step down, has promised to prudently manage the surging economy, though critics fear he would roll back years of free-market reforms.
Fujimori, 36, is backed by the business community and poor women. Her father was credited with opening the economy to trade and taming hyperinflation in the 1990s, but his government collapsed in a cloud of corruption and human rights scandals in 2000 following a tough crackdown on guerrillas.
Copyright Reuters, 2011
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