In my comments to the original diary
http://www.dailykos.com/... I said that it was possible that that diary would be the blog equivalent of Dewey defeats Truman. Sure enough, I was right about being wrong.
In what can only be described as a stunning come from behind victory for Alan Garcia, offical results show Senor Garcia increasing his lead over the once favorite Lourdes Flores. With over 84% of the vote counted it appears that time is running out for Senora Flores.
From El Comercio Online http://www.elcomercioperu.com.pe/...
Según la última actualización de la Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electorales (ONPE), al 84,41% de actas escrutadas a nivel nacional, Humala tiene el 30,85%, García el 24,70% y Flores Nano 23,59%.
Before this week no one really took Alan Garcia too seriously. The conventional wisdom was that there would be a runoff between Lourdes Flores and Ollanta Humala, as Garcia had consistently polled lower than Flores throughout the race (Apoyo polls). If you would have thought that people's opinions of Garcia's poor past performance in office would not be kind to him, you would have been wrong. At the end his numbers began to surge...he peaked at the perfect time.
This is Lourdes' second Presidential Race, and her second time to come up short. It must be a real bitter pill for her campaign followers to swallow as they had campaigned very hard in this election. They felt that they were going to win right up to bitter end...with over 84% of the vote counted, I think they still believe it. I don't see her pulling it out of the fire. Her only hope at this point is that in a runoff between Ollanta and Garcia there are enough blank votes cast to thwart a 50%+1 majority. If that happens then all of the presidential candidates would be back for another round of elections and she would have one more bite at the apple.
In other Peruvian Election news: Keiko Fujimori, daughter of jailed ex-President Alberto Fujimori has been elected to Congress. You can say a lot of things about Peruvian politics but you can't say it's not interesting.
