 "Peru vote neck-and-neck after Fujimori lead slips")
Peru's presidential vote has headed for a photo finish in a race between the daughter of an ex-president jailed for massacres and a former Wall Street banker.
Conservative Keiko Fujimori, 41, and her centre-right rival Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, 77, were virtually tied in exit polls as voting closed on Sunday at 2100 GMT.
The runoff election has forced voters to confront the South American nation's dark past. A 1980-2000 civil conflict involving leftist insurgents killed an estimated 70,000 people.
Many mistrust Keiko Fujimori because her father Alberto is in jail for corruption and the slaughter of alleged terrorists in the 1990s.
"We want no more dictatorships. There was a lot of repression and a lot of people died and disappeared," said Enrique Castillo, a 61-year-old queueing to vote in Lima.
Others hope Keiko Fujimori will be tough like her father in fighting a wave of violent crime in Peru, a major cocaine-producing country.
More From This Section
"Her father did good things too against crime," said administrative worker Silvia Cuadros, 45, waiting in line to vote for Fujimori.
"Our parents may make mistakes, but that does not mean their children will do the same."
Cheering supporters of the candidates gathered in separate rallies in Lima to watch the results come in yesterday evening.
Fujimori and Kuczynski earlier spoke to television crews at their traditional election-morning breakfasts with their families.
"Go out and vote, do it early and let us do it united, thinking of our country," Fujimori said.
"Today is a day of celebration and the winner should be Peru."
Kuczynski called for a "government of unity."
"Vote happily and think of democracy and dialogue. That is the only thing that will save us from corruption, drug-trafficking and turbulence."
Both candidates are right-leaning, US-educated politicians.
Kuczynski, son of a Jewish doctor from Germany, also studied in Britain in the 1950s.
They have both vowed to fight crime and create jobs in the nation of 31 million people.
Fujimori is the granddaughter of Japanese immigrants. A mother of two, married to an American, she is seen as more populist and socially conservative, and would be Peru's first woman president.