MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Toledo consolidates as main candidate for Peru’s presidential election in April

The former pro-business president has a comfortable ten points lead

Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo has extended his lead ahead of 10 April’s presidential election with Keiko Fujimori possibly disputing the second round, according to a public opinion poll by Lima-based Datum International.

Toledo, who was a pro-business president from July 2001 to July 2006, had 30% support, up three percentage points from last month, according to the poll published Monday by Peru.21 newspaper. Support for congress-woman Keiko and daughter of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori, was unchanged at 20%.

The centre right former mayor of the capital Lima, Luis Castañeda follows with 19%. This means Toledo consolidates as the main candidate and in the event of a run off, he would be competing with Keiko Fujimori. The poll also shows that Castañeda would have a better performance than Keiko in the run off.

Datum Director Manuel Torrado said that “Toledo’s campaign and his focus are proving the most effective”, however there are still risks that the former president “may commit mistakes” given his impulsive and restless character.

Toledo also led in polls last month by survey groups Ipsos Apoyo, CPI and Datum Internacional.

Ollanta Humala, head of the Andean country’s (ultra) Nationalist Party and who disputed the run-off with current president Alan García, had 12% support and former Finance minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski had 4 percent support.

The poll of 1,205 people in 16 of Peru’s 25 regions was taken from Jan. 28 to Feb. 1 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.