Peru's presidential candidate Fujimori leads poll with 51.4 percent of support

Peruvian presidential hopeful Keiko Fujimori of the center-right Popular Force (FP) Party led a pre-election poll with 51.4 percent of the vote, local media reports said Sunday.

In the lead up to a June 5 runoff between the winners of the first round, the survey by the polling firm Ipsos in 1,813 eligible voters showed Fujimori with a 2.8-percent lead over her conservative rival Pedro Kuczynski of the Peruvians for Change (PPK) Party, said Peruvian daily El Comercio.

Kuczynski garnered 48.6 percent of the vote.

Regardless of whom they planned to vote for, 42 percent of those surveyed said they believed Kuczynski would win the second round, while 39 percent said Fujimori would be the next president. Some 18 percent of the poll participants said they didn't know or wouldn't say.

In general elections held on April 10, Fujimori, the daughter of the disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who has been serving imprisonment on corruption charges and human rights violations, led the field of 10 candidates, garnering nearly 40 percent of the vote. Kuczynski came in the second, garnering 21.01 percent of the vote.

According to Peruvian election laws, a candidate must get more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round to avoid a runoff.

About 24 million Peruvians are eligible to vote, including those living abroad.

The winner will take office to be president of Peru for a tenure of five years on July 28. Endit