Humala 2nd place in tomorrow's Apoyo poll?

I'll tell you what I've picked up, no more and no less, then it's your choice to believe or not. About half an hour ago (7pm EST Saturday 19th) somebody told me that Ollanta Humala was being put in second place in the IPSOS/Apoyo opinion poll to be published Sunday March 20th for the Presidential vote on April 10th. My source isn't totally convinced of the veracity of this intel because according to said source it came from a friend who was told by a member of the Humala campaign inner circle who in turn claims to have been given an early sneak preview of the numbers that will get published tomorrow. However, my source is sufficiently intruiged with this and gives it enough substance to have passed it on. In the same spirit, this post gets written.

That's all I know up to now (apart from the name of my source and don't even think about asking). Let's see how the IPSOS/Apoyo poll turns out tomorrow morning (one of the best polling firms in Peru as regards accuracy and non-bias, fwiw). If indeed Ollanta Humala is in second place behind Alejandro Toledo, there are going to be a lot of shockwaves. Watch this space.

PS: The integrity and trustworthiness of my source is unquestionable. A straight shooter and one of the good'uns of life.

Peru Presidential Polling: Getting close for second spot

The new poll from the PUCP polling company is out for the April Peru Presidential elections and things are getting interesting:

Toledo still leads, but he's seen a couple of points taken from his popularity rating. Second is the steady-as-she-goes numbers that Keiko Fujimori enjoys and now a clear third is the wilting campaign of Luis Castañeda. Then comes the fun, as both Ollanta Humala and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski have made up ground on the two battling it out for the second spot in the run-off, with both having found some momentum. In particular, Ollanta Humala has got to within four points of taking second spot. 

If we check how the PUCP poll has developed over the last five polls....

...the trends get clearer. Castañeda has faded, and Ollanta and PPK have found new favour. One thing we haven't seen so far is a bunch of negative attacks on Ollanta Humala, as up to now the top three have kept their insults largely for one another. With one month to go, there's a mighty scrap on now so expect to hear a lot more about Ollanta in these final weeks (and not all of it will be pretty).

I still say Toledo wins (as least worst, not as best), by the way. All data from here.

Peru Presidential Election Update

The last month has seen a whole batch of polls from various companies and, barring a couple of dubious pollsters with long histories of favouristism (eg IDICE that hearts APRA) the numbers churned out have been (not exactly but fairly) regular. Today we get one from ok pollster IMASEN that goes like this:

As it was commissioned by Peruvian national newspaper La Republica, here's the screenshot of what appeared there this morning, too. Nice breakdown of provincial support for each candidate that shows the strong and weak points of each.

So now a view or two from your humble scribe:

1) Barring a very very big upset, Toledo will make it into the two-person second round runoff (and equally large a surprise would be his garnering enough votes to win in the first round...50% +1 vote isn't in the cards).

2) It's still tight between Keiko Fujimori and Luis Castañeda for the other spot in the run-off. Keiko has had a hardcore of 19% to 22% of the vote for a long time now and it hasn't changed. Meanwhile, Castañeda has been steadily losing voter support (in the polls at least) for the last six months or so. It's his second place to win or lose, with Keiko setting a benchmark.

3) Ollanta Humala has recently moved up from a generalized 10%/12% in various polls to a generalized 13% or 14% now. He's running a good campaign, keeping his more hardcore nationalists/leftist views out of the debate and has connected very well with rank and file Peruvians during his street campaigning (perhaps on an equal footing with Toledo on that score). If there's going to be a surprise in this election, Humala is the likely cause and if he gets more momentum it'd be possible (i'd call it unlikely but possible) that he snatched the 2nd place runoff spot.

4) Whatever happens and whoever he's up against in the run-off, be clear that Toledo is now odds-on favourite to be the next President of Peru. His campaign is well-organized and slick, he's a good politico and most importantly the feeling from Peru is that many will vote for him as "the least worst" rather than a great option, simply because the others on offer are so mediocre. Ollanta has baggage from the 2006 campaign, Keiko is quite simply the daughter of Alberto and that in its itself is enough to put people off her, Luis Castañeda is about as charismatic as a wet lettuce and this has been shining clear in the campaign so far, putting people off his candidacy.

5) It's been funny to watch the PPK campaign. He gets a lot of airtime and media support (because he's right up the street of the media moguls and newspaper owners) but when push comes to shove he has little support on a grassroots level. It's refreshing to see that the media can't always bend public opinion to their collective will. 

The bottom line is that IKN says Toledo gets to be President of Peru once again after a the run-off. Put a gun to my head and I'd say that he faces Keiko in that run-off, but it's really way too tight for second place between two (perhaps three) names. By the way, let's also be clear that Toledo has been the IKN tip since March 2010 when he was polling just 8.2% and stuck down in 4th place.

dyodd

Peru: If it's Sunday it must be....

...another Peru Presidential Poll.

This one is from IMA Estudios de Marketing, was taken on a national urban/rural basis and took the opinions of over 2000 people so it's a good start. It's also very good news for ex-Prez Alejandro Toledo, now in a clear lead over his two main rivals Keiko and Luis. Ollanta and Meche can't get any mojo running, the rest are long behind. Data from here and if you want to see something that is really scary for Toledo's rivals, click that link and check out page seven of the survey report.

Peru: New 2011 poll numbers confirm Toledo's big upmove

 the rogue's gallery of top 4

 

Today's survey from decently reputed pollster CPI was at a national level too, not the Lima/Callao survey mentioned a couple of days ago. Data (and photo, in fact) from here:

Luis Castañeda leads but the gap is closing. Toledo is confirmed in second place and the loser is once again Keiko Fujimori (ThankDaLawd). It's a long way back to 4th place at the moment. 

People, there's still a long way to go in this campaign and anything might happen so we shouldn't read too much into things as they stand....perhaps around mid-February onwards is when poll readings can be taken as a decent reflection of what might happen come election day. But  today we can confirm that Toledo is now a serious candidate to get his old job back and by the looks of things, no single candidate will win 50%+1 vote in the first round so a 2nd round runoff between the top two is a virtual certainty...whoever they might turn out to be.

Peru: Toledo confirms his run for President 2011

You saw it here first (ok...maybe second) at 11:47am EST.

Hot off the Twitterpress, Ex-Prez Alejandro Toledo has just shocked and surprised absolutely nobody by confirming his candidacy for President of Peru in 2011. Here's the linko.

UPDATE: Out of academic interest, a bit of oldmedia-vs-newmedia grist. Peru's two biggest newspapers, La Republica and El Comercio, "broke" the same story at 11:58am and 11:59am respectively, which could have been read on umpteen Peru Spanish language blogs by that time. Just sayin'.

Peru beats Chile in one thing only....

....Corruption.

Peru's esteemed Universidad Catolica's annual survey on opinions regarding corruption in Peru has just been published. Read the whole thing right here, but below are three charts built from the stats to give you an idea of the way things are. Click any of the charts to make them bigger and easier to read.

This one shows that corruption is seen as getting steadily worse in Twobreakfast's Peru.

This one sees Peruvians projecting its current opinion of Twobreakfasts on to his previous disasterous administration in the 1980s. Any President that even gets close to challenging that of 'El Chino' in the corruption stakes should be thoroughly ashamed.

It's the samo samo, folks.

So, kind and downright stupid foreign direct investor, just keep pouring your money into the black hole of a totally corrupt political system if you want. Viva investment grade. Viva, viva, viva.

Peru CPI survey: So much for growth

Peruvian pollsters CPI ran a survey recently and as well as the usual guff about popularity ratings (Twobreakfasts scored an abysmal 24%) and stuff about voter intentions for the next election (El Chino's daughter leading...it could only happen en un pais bananero) there was an interesting and detailed section on perceptions of the Garcia government and how the people that really matter (not you, not me, not that dumbass who wrote glowing BS for Slate, not the dumbasses in suits at RGE Monitor) namely the citizens of Peru see their country's progress under Twobreakfasts compared to the prvious administration led by Alejandro Toledo.

Here are the charts. This one is the full Monty with all stats but is tough to read....

Click to enlarge (gets big)

...so this second chart strips out the "same" and "no opinion" replies to give an easier-on-the-eye snapshot.

Click to enlarge

So of the 15 categories on display, things are worse than they were previously in nine, same in two and better in four. And note we're talking about the Toledo government by comparison here, the guy that polled single digit popularity numbers when in office. The bar was set very low for Twobreakfasts and he's jumped like an elephant. True mediocrity.

Finally, let's just point to the fact that although Peruvians recognize there is more investment coming into the country (other parts of the same survey make that abundantly clear) they are less content with their lot. It does beg the question as to why the meme of "foreign investment good" is pumped down people's throat sans cesse. But hey, wait a moment! Never mind the locals' views, cos it just so happens to benefit the people that write the reports saying "FDI good".

Funny coincidence dat, innit?