(Corrects name of Lopez Chau’s party in paragraph 2 to Ahora Nacion, not Juntos por el Peru)
LIMA, March 16 (Reuters) – Peruvian left-wing candidate Alfonso Lopez Chau is closing in on the two leading right-wing candidates leading the race just weeks before the presidential election, a poll showed.
• Lopez Chau, an economist and former central bank director from the left-wing party Ahora Nacion, rose to 6.5% of the vote from 5.1% in the prior poll.
• The frontrunners, Rafael Lopez Aliaga and Keiko Fujimori, netted 11.4% and 10.9% of the vote respectively in a Datum Internacional survey.
• Those numbers could imply a technical tie within the poll’s margin of error of +/-2.5%.
• The survey was conducted March 6-10 and released Sunday on America Television.
• Retired air force general and former intelligence director Wolfgang Crozo placed fourth at 5.1%.
• Fujimori, running for a fourth time, is the daughter of late ex-president Alberto Fujimori, who was imprisoned 16 years for human rights abuses.
• The number of Peruvians undecided or that plan not to vote declined to 36.7%, from 38.5% priorly, still elevated compared with the 18% registered at a similar point leading up to the 2021 presidential election.
POLITICAL CONTEXT
• Peru, which has experienced constant political instability with eight presidents since 2018, will hold elections on April 12.
• No first-round winner is anticipated and a run-off vote is expected in June.
• The new president will assume power at the end of July.
• The world’s third-biggest copper producer with a heavily mining-reliant economy has thus far shown resilience to political shocks.
• Latest official data showed that Peru’s economy expanded 3.54% year-on-year in January with an increased production of copper, zinc, gold and silver.
(Reporting by Marco Aquino; Writing by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez; editing by Cassandra Garrison)
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