Latest Poll Shows Leftist Castillo Leading, But Fujimori Catching Up

The latest opinion poll ahead of Peru's presidential run-off election on 6 June shows leftist Free Peru candidate Pedro Castillo maintaining a lead, albeit a reduced one with right-wing Popular Force candidate Keiko Fujimori making gains.

• Peru, presidential election poll (2nd round): Castillo (PL): 56.4% (-5), Fujimori (FP): 43.6% (+5), Datum, (+/- vs. 16-20 Apr). Fieldwork: 27-29 April 2021. Sample: 1,200 (Don't knows excluded)
• Peru presidential election poll (2nd round): Castillo (PL): 44% (+3), Fujimori (FP): 34% (+8), Don't Know: 22%. Fieldwork: 27-29 April 2021. Sample: 1,200 (Don't know's included).
• The election is likely to remain an extremely bitter contest between two candidates at polar opposites of the political spectrum.
• In the 1980s, the violent Maoist guerilla group the Shining Path committed such atrocities that then-President Alberto Fujimori essentially suspended all democratic institutions in the 1990s in an effort to crush the rebels, but then did not lift the authoritarian measures once the Shining Path had been defeated engendering a decade of political repression.
• The current election pits Fujimori's daughter, who follows in his ideological footsteps, against Castillo, who's Free Peru party are the most far-left in Peru and could be viewed as the ideological heirs to the Shining Path, with commitments to Marxist-Leninist policies a key manifesto pledge (despite attempts by Castillo to row back on some communist stances having won the first-round election in April).