Lima.- The leftist candidate Roberto Sánchez, who is vying for the Presidency of Peru this Sunday against right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori, stated that “no one can say ‘I have already won'” after exit polls were released revealing a technical tie with a slight advantage for the right-wing candidate.
“It is very clear that in this initial exit poll there is a statistical tie, it is very clear. For us, it is a moment of immense expectation due to the significant support, which has been noted, for example, in the city of Lima where we have gone from 3% in the first round to exceeding 36%,” Sánchez told the media.
After visiting former president Pedro Castillo (2021-2022) at the Barbadillo prison, where he is serving a sentence for his 2022 coup attempt, and for whom he is running on his behalf, the candidate moved to the Obras party headquarters in the center of the capital, with whom he has formed an alliance along with other political groups.
“We are in a position of unrestricted respect for the official results (…) we want with great enthusiasm, with great hope that the moment for the defense of the vote of the deep peoples, the rural peoples and all Peruvians will now arrive,” he added.
The leader of the Juntos por el Perú party maintained that exit polls have placed Fujimori with a slight advantage in recent years, but her opponents, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018) and Pedro Castillo, have subsequently won, and therefore “no one can say ‘I have already won'”.
He expressed gratitude for “the overwhelming support from the regions,” where, according to the poll, he has won by a large margin over Fujimori in Andean departments in the center and south of the country such as Cajamarca, Ayacucho, Puno, Cusco, Tacna, or Huánuco.
He considered that there is “an underrepresentation (of Sánchez’s vote in rural areas) that will still be noticeable in the count that is just beginning”.
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“We are overjoyed because (Fujimori’s) campaign has been brutal, with millionaire contributions, the presence of the media, an overwhelming coalition, and yet, here is the popular movement, the people with hope to recover democracy, we go with faith,” said Sánchez, smiling.
According to the polling firm Ipsos, Fujimori received 50.7% of the valid votes and Sánchez obtained 49.3%, while Datum indicated that the candidate from the Fuerza Popular party obtained 50.53% of the votes and the candidate from Juntos por el Perú 49.47%.
The first one gives a difference of 1.4 percentage points between both, while the second reduces that margin to just 1.06%. Both polls have a margin of error of 3%, which makes the difference not yet conclusive enough to determine a winner for this election
