MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Keiko Fujimori soars in Peruvian presidential election polls

Keiko Fujimori, a three time contender to Pizarro's Palace

The latest Peruvian presidential election opinion polls showed the gap between socialist front-runner Pedro Castillo and the conservative Keiko Fujimori is rapidly shrinking ahead of June 6 presidential elections.

The two new polls released Sunday and Monday showed Castillo, a schoolteacher from rural Peru, had lost almost his entire lead over Fujimori, a three-time contender for the presidency.

The Peruvian currency sol closed up 2.36%, its strongest daily performance since April 2016.

Castillo’s surprise appearance on the ballot had rattled many investors and miners, cautious of a sharp left turn in the world’s No. 2 copper producer, which will be electing its fifth president in the past five years after a recurrent constitutional disruption last year.

The recent polls appeared to assuage some of their concerns. A survey from Peru’s Company for Market Studies and Public Opinion (CPI) found Castillo’s lead had shrunk to just 2.2 percentage points, compared to a 12.4 percentage point gap in the group’s previous poll. The poll of 1,600 people was conducted between May 6-8, with a margin of error of 2.5%.

Another poll, published on Sunday by the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP) put the gap between the two candidates at 6.2 percentage points, versus 20 points two weeks ago.

On Friday, the international Datum reported that the advantage was five percentage points.

Castillo, who has pledged to redraft Peru’s constitution to give the state a more dominant role in the economy, has recently moved to moderate his stance in some areas to help win over centrist and center-left voters. According to Peruvian media sources, Castillo is closely advised by Vladimir Cerrón a neurosurgeon, involved in radical politics, and admiration for Venezuela's Chavez and the Cuban regime.

But Fujimori, the scion of a powerful political family whose father is an ex-president now in prison for corruption and human rights abuses, has ratcheted up her criticism of Castillo as a left-wing extremist who could jeopardize the Andean’s nation’s economic progress in recent years with a nationalization government program.