Lima, Apr 11 (IANS): The presidential candidate for the Popular Force party, Keiko Fujimori, is ahead in early exit polls from the Peruvian general election.

According to a poll by IPSOS-Peru, Fujimori is counting with 37.8 percent of voting intentions in the election, which began at 8:00 a.m. local time on Sunday, Xinhua reported.

Her two closest competitors, Pedro Kuczynski from Peruvians for Change and Veronika Mendoza from Broad Front, are neck-and-neck, with 20.9 percent and 20.3 percent of the vote respectively.

Two other polls by GFK and CPI confirmed Fujimori's lead, putting her on 39.9 percent and 39.1 percent of voting intentions. These other two polls seemed to also favor Kuczynski in second place, putting ahead of Mendoza both times.

The other seven candidates for the highest office in the country are far behind.

Since it seems that no candidate will cross the 50 percent barrier to win directly, a second round of elections between the top two finishers will be held on June 5.

The first official advanced results will be divulged at 9:00 p. m. local time by the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), with around 30 percent of the total votes counted.

The full final results will be announced on Monday after a complete count.

A total of around 23 million Peruvians, including about 900,000 living abroad, are eligible to vote for president, vice president, 130 congressmen and five representatives to the Andean Parliament, who will take office on July 28 for the next five years.