LIMA, Peru — In elections overshadowed by allegations of fraud, Peruvians voted Sunday on whether to give iron-handed President Alberto Fujimori a controversial third five-year term.
Fujimori, 61, popular for years for having crushed leftist insurgencies and ending economic chaos, was fighting for his political life against 54-year-old Alejandro Toledo, a U.S.-trained economist.
Moments after the voting ended Sunday afternoon, an exit poll by the independent polling firm Apoyo gave Toledo 45.2 percent of the votes to Fujimori's 43.6 percent. The rest of the vote was split among other candidates.
But the poll did not take into account isolated rural areas not accessible by road, where Fujimori is expected to be strong.
If the numbers hold up it would mean a runoff will be necessary, since a candidate needs to obtain more than 50 percent of valid votes to win outright.
Apoyo director Alfredo Torres said the exit poll figures were based on interviews with 35,000 voters from 3,500 voting tables in 70 provinces around the country. There were more than 80,000 voting tables in all. Torres said the margin of error was 5 percentage points.
Apoyo's exit polls have proved highly accurate in past elections. But Torres said last week they would not include samples from the remote rural areas where 10 to 15 percent of the voters live.
Toledo, who grew up in poverty, has capitalized on the country's deep two-year recession and high unemployment to cut into Fujimori's support among the poor.
"People don't know much about him, but we know who we're not supporting. He is sure to be better than Fujimori," Eduardo Vasquez, 24, one of Peru's many unemployed, said after voting at a school set amid shack-covered desert hills on Lima's southern outskirts.
But Fujimori still enjoys widespread support and had a lead of 6 to 7 percentage points in several public opinion surveys going into the election.
"He has done so much that appeared impossible," said Antero Pasos, a 72-year-old retired auto mechanic who voted at the same school as Vasquez. "No other governments have accomplished what he did. Now we have roads, electricity, health care."
Fujimori, who says he has proven to Peruvians that he keeps his promises, had appeared on his way to an easy victory, but in recent weeks Toledo bolted from a pack of eight opposition candidates and was breathing down Fujimori's neck.
At a breakfast meeting with reporters before voting, Fujimori defended the cleanliness of the elections and said warnings from international monitors did not bother him.
"We pay no heed to threats from other countries," he said. "The possibility of fraud does not exist."
Before leaving his house to vote, Toledo called the campaign "tremendously unfair" and "dirty" but reminded Peruvians that the voting process is secret.
He said he was going to await the election results outside the Palace of Justice and hoped there would be "justice for the will of the women and men of Peru."
International election monitors are upset with Fujimori's blatant attempts to manipulate Sunday's vote to guarantee his re-election.
Critics accused Fujimori and his allies in military intelligence of a systematic, illegal campaign financed by public funds to discredit and intimidate leading opposition candidates.
More than 14 million Peruvians were registered to vote. The attention Sunday was focused on safeguards to prevent official tampering with vote results.
Eduardo Stein, head of a team of monitors from the Organization of American States, said the greatest danger was in rural areas where opposition parties had no poll watchers to man voting tables.
"The parties and observers in general have the capacity to cover no more than 30 percent of the tables," Stein told The Associated Press before voting began. "In far-off places control practically does not exist."
Monitors also were concerned that in isolated areas army units might pressure illiterate peasants into voting for Fujimori.
Fujimori, the son of poor Japanese immigrants, is known as "El Chino" — "The Chinaman" — because of his Asian features. Toledo is dubbed "El Cholo," a term used in Peru to describe Indian descendants.
Toledo has promised to create at least 400,000 jobs by lowering taxes to spur business investment. The pledge has strong appeal to voters in a country in which only half the labor force has steady work.
Toledo's Indian heritage is also one of the keys to his popularity. More than 80 percent of Peruvians are of Indian descent and complain of discrimination at the hands of a lighter-skinned elite.