Susana Villarán, a leftist candidate for Lima’s mayor, has closed the gap on conservative front runner Lourdes Flores ahead of elections scheduled in October, according to a recent poll by the Public Opinion Institute at Peru’s Catholic University.
In August, an opinion poll by IMA Marketing Studio placed Villarán with almost 10 percent support, while Flores was leading with 36.4 percent support.
However in the recent poll by the Catholic University, 27 percent said they would vote for Villarán and 33 percent for Flores.
The increase in support for Villarán comes partially from those who were planning to vote for Alex Kouri. In late August, Peru’s National Election Board (JNE) ruled that Kouri would not be able to run in the elections for Lima’s mayor because he did not comply with residency requirements.
Kouri is the former mayor of the seaport city of Callao. Survey’s regularly placed Kouri second behind Lourdes for Lima’s mayor.
In addition, the recent survey found that those who would definitely vote for Villarán increased from 4 percent in July to 23 percent his month. Meanwhile, 45 percent of respondents said they would definitely not vote for Flores, up from 34 percent in July.
Nevertheless, more than 50 percent of respondents said they believe Flores will win the election.
The survey of 523 people in metropolitan Lima was conducted from September 3-5. It has a margin of error of 4.3 percentage points.
