Humala wins Peru first round vote, Fujimori second - exit polls

[Judi Lynn]

Humala wins Peru first round vote, Fujimori second - exit polls
28 mins ago

http://d.yimg.com.nyud.net:8090/i/ng/ne/rtrs/20110410/15/2092196906-dog-waits-its-owner-voters-line-vote-general-elections-lima.jpg

A dog waits with its owner as voters line up to vote in general elections in Lima


Left-wing nationalist Ollanta Humala won the first round of Peru's presidential election on Sunday and rightist lawmaker Keiko Fujimori had a slim hold on second place, three exit polls showed on Sunday after voting ended. Skip related content

A Datum exit poll gave Humala 33.8 percent of the vote, followed by Fujimori with 21.3 percent. Former prime minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski had 19.5 percent and former President Alejandro Toledo, 15.2 percent.

An Ipsos exit poll showed Humala with 31.6 percent, Fujimori with 21.4 percent, Kuczynski on 19.2 percent and Toledo, 16.1 percent.

A CPI poll gave Humala 33 percent, with Fujimori on 22 percent and Kuczynski in third on 19 percent.

More:
A dog waits with its owner as voters line up to vote in general elections in Lima

[Judi Lynn]

1. Humala leads Peru vote, run-off wide open

Humala leads Peru vote, run-off wide open
49 mins ago

Left-wing nationalist Ollanta Humala was set to win the first round of Peru's presidential election on Sunday and face one of two pro-business challengers in a June 5 run-off, early results showed. Skip related content

With 18 percent of ballots tallied, officials said Humala had 26.5 percent of the votes, followed by former Wall Street banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski at 24.5 percent and rightist lawmaker Keiko Fujimori at 21.1 percent.

Three earlier unofficial samplings of ballots, however, showed Humala with a wider lead over his nearest challenger and Fujimori advancing to the run-off with a lead of 2 to 4 percentage points over Kuczynski.

Despite a decade-long economic boom, a third of Peruvians live in poverty and many rallied behind Humala, a former army officer who has positioned himself as a man of the people facing rivals backed by big business.

More:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20110411/twl-uk-peru-election-bd5ae06.html

[rabs]

2. Best to wait just a bit more

As of 11:38 Peruvian time only 45 percent of the vote has been counted. Results so far are mostly from Lima. Votes in the altiplano and the jungle and other far-flung regions have not been tabulated yet.

PPK has strong support in northern Peru and possible could catch up to Keiko.

The results giving Humala and Keiko first and second are from exit polls.

Btw, in Chile there were 62,000 Peruvians eligible to vote.

[Judi Lynn]

3. I see! I would think those two areas would have a different point of view from Lima's

I don't know anything about the PPK character, but I would think he's got to be a better prospect than Keiko.

Isn't it possible Keiko could give her creepy, corrupt, murderous father a pardon?

Didn't know there were so many Peruvians in Chile. That many votes could make a difference.

Thanks for a better look at this. :hi:

[rabs]

4. Official results as of midnight Peru time

Still a long way to go, less than 50 percent of national vote tabulated so far.

Ollanta Humala 26,994%
Pablo Kuczynski 23,607%
Keiko Fujimori 21,848%
Alejandro Toledo 15,378%
Luis Castañeda 11,507%

It is running closer than the exit polls predicted. Humala seems to be in for the second round but it is still a toss-up between Keiko and PPK.

Couple of years ago Keiko said one of her first acts as president would be to pardon her father. But this time around she backed off.

PPK showed strong support on the social media, Twitter, Facebook etc. But those are the better off and younger Peruvians who have computers and cellphones, Ipads etc.

The problem for PKK is that the vast majority of indigenous and poor Peruvians do not use such gadgets.

(edit to add that I am watching results directly from Lima.)

:hi: back ...

[rabs]

5. Peruvians voting abroad

Watched a report on Univision an hour ago.

Patterson N.J., 42,000 Peruvians
Miami, 48,000
Argentina 106,000
Spain 123,000
Chile 62,000
Venezuela and Ecuador -- no numbers but communities sizeable.

Votes from those large expat communities will probably not be known until tomorrow, and in case of a close contest for second place, they could be crucial.

[Judi Lynn]

6. After seeing this post, I started looking around for what I could find, also,

and discovered something I didn't know: voting is compulsory in Peru. Yikes! It's also compulsory for Peruvians NOT in Peru!

... Peruvians vote in San Francisco
Posted: 04/10/2011 9:50 PM

SAN FRANCISCO -- Thousands of Peruvian-Americans headed to the Mission district on Sunday to vote for a new president of Peru.

"We have a great many Peruvians who came today," said Nicolas Roncagliolo, consul general of the Peruvian consulate of San Francisco, speaking after the polls closed Sunday afternoon.

He said poll workers were still counting the results, but he expected that at least 4,000 to 5,000 people in the Bay Area and Northern California cast ballots at the Mission district campus of the City College of San Francisco. The voting station was one of several in the United States where Peruvian immigrants could vote in the South American country's presidential election.

Voting is mandatory for adult Peruvians who are younger than 70, and the requirement extends to Peruvians living abroad. The Bay Area is home to about 17,000 Peruvian-born residents, with most settled in Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, according to recent census estimates.

http://m.contracostatimes.com/contracosta/db_10590/contentdetail.htm;jsessionid=6D0E521BFEAFB31561B99B4D8CBC0C0A?contentguid=3s7t63DR&detailindex=1&pn=0&ps=5

[Judi Lynn]

7. Bomb threat closes Peru polling station: Report (Rome)

Bomb threat closes Peru polling station: Report
April 10, 2011

ROME: A bomb threat led to the evacuation of a Rome school used as a polling station for expatriate Peruvians voting Sunday in their country's presidential elections, Italian media reported.

Authorities received an anonymous telephone call claiming there was a bomb in the Giulio Cesare school, the ANSA news agency reported.

Traffic was diverted from the area as police investigated the claim, they said.

About 20 million Peruvians are legally obliged to vote for a successor to Alan Garcia, who cannot stand for immediate re-election, as well as 130 lawmakers for the one-chamber Congress.

http://gulftoday.ae/portal/69d1fcdd-b8b6-46b6-8526-410403f1c0af.aspx

[Judi Lynn]

8. Found two different 2nd place winners:

April 11, 2011
Unofficial result: Leftist military man to face Fujimori daughter in Peru presidential runoff
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/11/ap/latinamerica/main20052640.shtml
(no story, yet, just a headline.

Peru elections: Leftist Humala leads, Kuczynski 2nd
By REUTERS
04/11/2011 10:04

LIMA - Left-wing nationalist Ollanta Humala was placed first in Peru's presidential election and former finance minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski was running second with 50 percent of votes counted, local radio said early on Monday based on official data.

The result showed Humala with 27.62 percent of the votes, Kuczynski with 23.11 percent and rightist lawmaker Keiko Fujimori with 21.95 percent. That would mean a June 5 run-off between Humala and Kuczynski, though unofficial quick counts have suggested Fujimori will advance.

http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=216067

[rabs]

9. With 80 oercent counted, Humala and Keiko on top

Official results updated at 11:49 hrs Peru time.

80,046 of vote counted

Ollanta Humala 30,456%
Keiko Fujimori 23,082%
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski 20,082%
Alejandro Toledo 15,154%
Luis Castañeda 10,507% Ver Resultados Congreso
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Looks like too little to late for PPK.

The surprising result so far is how Toledo sank like a stone. He was just an extension of Alan Garcia and people were fed up with corruption as usual. Toledo's Paris-born Israeli wife did not exactly help his chances this time around. Too haughty for most Peruvians.

Suspect that PPK, Toledo and Castaneda will be piling up on Humala, although Keiko is not exactly an appetizing choice either.

Runoff will be in two months.

[Derechos]

10. I don't think you can overlook that Toldeo ran

a terrible campaign. The fact that he barely won his home department says a lot. I received reports from Huaracinos, Huaraz is the capital of Ancash, Toledo's home department, that he was not prepared during a recent campaign stop and many of his own supporters were upset over his poor performance.

I wouldn't say that Toledo is an extension of Garcia. The massive privatization policies of Garcia including efforts to criminalize opposition to those policies began under Fujimori, were continued and extended under Toledo, and taken to new heights under Garcia. And I am not so sure Garica is such an ideologue but instead more of a political opportunist who takes things to the extreme. Who would have thought that his populist government of the late 1980s with massive government involvement in the economy would morph into the leader of privatization that he claims to be today and whose Apra party votes in block with the two right leaning parties of the Fujimoristas and the Unidad Nacional? Alberto Fujimori tried to arrest Garcia in the early 90s.

If Keiko and Humala are the two in the second round as is likely, those results show large sections of Peru that are sharply divided between those who want to continue the policies that began under Fujimori, privatization of state assets, pro business policies including the weakening of labor and environmental protections, strong centralized government, and the growing indigenous/campesino movement that seems to finally be coming into its own organizationally and politically and are fed up with those policies that jeopardize their land and resource rights and ignore their rights to self-government as protected under international law. There are also large groups of Peruvians who see Peru's strong economic growth and wonder where the benefits are for the majority of Peruvians. I won't place all the blame on the Garcia administration as local corruption is also a huge problem. But if privitization of resources was your principle economic development strategy, you would think his administration would have done more to ensure that those resources were used in a more transparent manner locally instead of the millions of soles that were lost to corruption. Antemina is the largest mining project in Peru constituting 3% of Peru's GDP. San Marcos, a community of 9,000 people, is the municipality located right next door to that mine and received 150 million soles via the canon minero. Looking at its infrastructure, you would never know this if you were to visit.

What remains to be seen is how those who voted for Toledo and the other candidates will vote in June. Do they want to stay with the economic and political policies of the 90s or do they want something different. The leftist movement in Peru had been weakened for years by Peru's violent political past. Nevertheless, Susana Viilaron's win last fall as the Mayor of Lima, in spite of all the fear tactics used against her candidacy, demonstrated a major political shift in Peru that perhaps Peruvians are letting go of their fears and willing to give the "new left" a chance. Villaran and Humala are from different parties but do fall on the same side of political ideological spectrum although Villaran is likely considered more center-left than Humala. The results of the second round will be very interesting.

[Peace Patriot]

11. Thank you for your analysis, Derechos! I didn't know about the mayor of Lima. Thanks! nt

[Peace Patriot]

12. A great big THANK YOU to rabs for providing us with the results! nt

[rabs]

13. Hey, you're welcome and latest

at 1 a.m. Peruvian time:

With slightly over 90 percent of the votes counted, Keiko has widened her lead to almost 630,000 votes over PPK, who earlier today threw in the towel and said he would not vote for Humala.

The race for second place could narrow some when the overseas votes come in, but it's almost certain tht PPK cannot catch up.

Meantime, want to introduce you to Kenji


Kenji is the little brother of Keiko, the youngest son of his jailed father.

Kenji is on the verge of being voted into the Peruvian Senate. As of yesterday he was way out in front (by more than 20,000 votes) of his rival in Lima, a Protestant pastor.

If Kenji wins the Senate seat, Peru might have a little dynasty budding -- father a former president in jail, Keiko in the running for the presidency, and Kenji in the Senate.

What a trio !!!