Ten days after runoff vote, Fujimori close to victory in Peru’s highly contested presidential election

It has been 10 days since the presidential run-off in Peru, but final results and the official declaration of victory remain pending due to just 0.84% of votes that are under review by election officials, who have set mid-July as the final deadline to decide. In a tightly contested vote between right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori and the leftist Roberto Sánchez, Fujimori currently leads the count by 36,889 votes and is projected as the virtual winner. While the process is still ongoing, uncertainty, protests and nullification appeals driven by the left are taking hold among an electorate exhausted by the polarization and political instability of recent years.

Most analysts consider Fujimori the winner, pointing out that the challenged tallies — about 200,000 votes in dispute — come largely from Lima and Callao, where the conservative candidate’s electoral stronghold is and where most votes are expected to favor her. “At this point, it is practically impossible for Sánchez to overturn the vote gap,” says political scientist and electoral expert Fernando Tuesta. “Peru is the only country with results this close in three consecutive elections, which will be decided by less than a 1% margin between the candidates,” he explains.

With official partial results counted to 99.1%, the image is of a country split in two, reflecting the divergent political projects that faced off in the run-off. On one side is Roberto Sánchez’s left, which picked up the rural vote in the impoverished south associated with former president Pedro Castillo — jailed for an attempted self-coup in 2022 — and which widened its base by softening its positions in the week before the vote to move toward the center and allay economic sectors’ fears.

On the other side is Fujimorismo, embodied by the daughter of the autocrat who died in 2024, Alberto Fujimori, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for human rights violations and corruption. The candidate, who has reached a second round for the fourth consecutive time, has used that controversial political legacy to draw a parallel between her father’s fight against terrorism in the 1990s and the fight against today’s rising crime—now the public’s main concern and the axis of her campaign.

As the days pass and Keiko Fujimori’s lead grows, Sánchez’s supporters have taken to the streets twice to “defend the vote,” and the party itself has called a “major mobilization” in Lima for Friday. “Citizen voting has been delegitimized,” the party said in a statement released Monday, going on to denounce “the lack of transparency of the bodies overseeing the electoral process” and “political-media maneuvers that attack the electoral justice system and the will of the people.”

The overseas vote, already counted, strongly favored Keiko Fujimori, especially in the United States, where the largest Peruvian community abroad lives and where she obtained 76.4% of the votes. Inside Peru, however, the count tipped toward Sánchez, who had 50.1% of ballots versus 49.8%. That divergence has led some to even challenge the voting rights of Peruvians living abroad. A political ally of Sánchez said on X that he had filed an injunction against a resolution on overseas voting to annul it: “Eight days after the run-off, they changed the rules of the game. They removed the digitization of overseas tallies and used diplomatic pouches instead of electronic ballot boxes as in the first round—without justification. Without law. Overseas elections are null,” he said.

The line separating rhetoric about fraud from legitimate doubts about aspects of the electoral process is thin, especially after a chaotic first round marred by logistical problems and allegations from a far-right candidate. Sánchez stresses the importance of respecting results and demands transparency while supporting the protests. “A recount and transparency do not harm democracy but strengthen it, since power stems from citizen votes, not political maneuvers. We must end a ‘hybrid democracy,’” he said Tuesday on X.

“Juntos por el Perú [Sánchez’s party] is challenging points of the process, such as the fact that overseas votes arrived later in this second round —they came in diplomatic pouches instead of the electronic ballot boxes used in the first round— but there is no cry of fraud per se, it is more about making a show of strength,” explains political scientist Paula Távara. Political scientist Eduardo Dargent makes the same observation, saying that “so far Sánchez has been careful not to shout fraud, beyond grandstanding by some team members, because it is very dangerous in a country where many people believe both sides commit fraud even if it is not proven,” he says.

While left-wing and anti-Fujimori forces stir into action, the conservative candidate has spoken only a couple of times to call for respect for the results and the electoral process, and to announce a brief family trip with one of her daughters, posting a picture of them at the airport on X.

Her position now is very different from 2021, when she lost to Pedro del Castillo. “There was a systematic effort to break the popular will,” Fujimori said when her defeat was imminent. “In that election, she and her party sought to nullify the rural vote on the belief they had been deceived. That was a challenge rooted in classism and racism,” Paula Távara says. “Now no one has come out to say, ‘the whites of Lima stole the election from us.’”

Although it is unclear when the electoral court will finish assessing the challenged tallies, if Fujimori wins—as analysts deem likely—she will add the executive to her already large share of power in Congress and the Senate, where her party holds a majority. “In this century, presidents have been weak, supported by fragile organizations and parties, and no strong alternative has been built to the persistence of Keiko Fujimori, who has accumulated experience,” political scientist Tuesta explains.

In a country that has had eight presidents in a decade, shaken by political instability, Dargent highlights the need to “recover governability” as the next presidency’s primary objective. Tuesta believes that in a possible Keiko Fujimori victory, “she will have to build a government beyond Fujimorismo, because she comes out of an election in which Sánchez won within the country; the overseas vote will not be present in day-to-day life, and it remains to be seen how she will deal with those territories—the rural south, the poorest regions that did not vote for her,” he says.

In her campaign closing, Fujimori appealed to the “unity and reconciliation” of Peruvians. Whether she will prevail, and if so whether she will follow that path on her fourth attempt, remains to be seen.

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