Dark Horse Favored in Peru Runoff Vote : Elections: First-round winner Vargas Llosa may lose the presidential race bid to a surprise runner-up, analysts say.

Renowned author Mario Vargas Llosa, who won the first round of Peruvian presidential elections, is likely to lose to surprise runner-up Alberto Fujimori in a runoff vote, political analysts said Monday.

Fujimori, an agricultural engineer and the son of Japanese immigrants, rose from political obscurity in the last month to finish second in Sunday’s first-round voting.

The alignment of parties whose candidates were eliminated Sunday favors Fujimori in the runoff, to be held June 3. If it were held immediately, analysts said, Fujimori’s popular momentum would carry him to certain victory.

Vargas Llosa won about 32% of the votes Sunday to Fujimori’s 29%, according to unofficial but reliable projections. Conclusive official results are not expected for several days.

Vargas Llosa, 54 and a political newcomer, received ratings of more than 50% in voter preference polls during several months last year. But this year, his support has gradually fallen, leaving an opening that Fujimori has quickly filled. Fujimori, 51 and also new to politics, had poll ratings of less then 2% until a few weeks ago.

“He is a rising phenomenon,” said Manuel Torrado, a prominent pollster and political consultant.

Datum, Torrado’s polling firm, conducted a small survey before Sunday’s election that asked whether voters would choose Fujimori or Vargas Llosa in a runoff. Fujimori beat Vargas Llosa 58% to 35% in the poll.

Torrado said that Vargas Llosa’s only chance of winning the runoff is to completely change the strategy of his campaign.

“He has made a bad campaign in which he has been identified with the right-wing, the rich, the whites,” Torrado said. The majority of Peruvians are poor and of Indian descent.

As Vargas Llosa has fallen out of favor, Fujimori, at the head of a new party called Cambio 90 (Change ‘90), has gained support with a low-key, simple message of support for small businessmen, slum-dwellers and peasants. His campaign motto is “Honor, technology and jobs.”

Many Peruvians are said to associate Fujimori with Japan’s economic success and even to hope that he will attract Japanese aid and investment.

The great majority of Peruvian workers currently are unemployed or underemployed, and inflation is racing at more than 2,000% a year.

In a press conference Monday, Fujimori attributed his success to his campaign message and to a “new political style.” He expressed optimism for the runoff.

“I am going to work with strategy, political strategy, and I am going to show once again how politics is managed in this new style here in Peru,” he said.

Alfredo Torres, another pollster, said Fujimori’s spectacular rise has created an “emotional factor” that works against Vargas Llosa.

“If the second round were tomorrow, the emotional factor would prevail and Cambio 90 would be favored,” Torres said.

Torres did not rule out a reversal of Vargas Llosa’s decline in popularity, but a foreign diplomatic analyst said that, “I think it’s too late” for Vargas Llosa.

The diplomat said that militant members of President Alan Garcia’s American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) will vote against Vargas Llosa, who heads the Liberty party. About 16% of Sunday’s voters cast ballots for APRA candidate Luis Alva Castro despite widespread discontent with Garcia’s economic policies.

“They’ll go with Fujimori, absolutely,” the diplomat said.

The APRA campaign depicted Vargas Llosa as a dangerous right-winger whose free-market policies and proposals for austerity would add to the suffering of the poor.

“It was one of the strongest scare campaigns I have ever run across,” the diplomat said.

Vargas Llosa also is unlikely to receive runoff votes from Peruvians who support the United Left and Socialist Left parties, the diplomat said. Together, the two leftist candidates won about 10% of Sunday’s vote.

For Vargas Llosa to win the runoff, the diplomat said, he would have to take votes that went to Fujimori in the first round. He said it is more likely that Fujimori will take votes from two parties that have supported Vargas Llosa in his Democratic Front coalition.

Whoever wins the runoff will face the problem of trying to solve Peru’s deep economic ills without majority support in the new Congress elected Sunday. According to projections, Vargas Llosa’s coalition won 63 of 180 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, while Fujimori’s Cambio 90 won 34. APRA appeared to have 49 seats, the two leftist parties 23 and others 11.