Peru will hold a presidential runoff on 7 June between Keiko Fujimori, leader of the right-wing Fuerza Popular party and daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, and Roberto Sánchez, a congressman and self-proclaimed political heir of jailed ex-president Pedro Castillo. With 99.66% of ballots from the first round of 12 April now processed, electoral authorities confirm Fujimori in first place with 17.17% of valid votes — her lowest opening share across four consecutive presidential bids — while Sánchez, of Juntos por el Perú, took 12%. He leads Lima's former mayor Rafael López Aliaga of Renovación Popular by roughly 14,500 votes, a margin narrow enough to keep the second-place contest unresolved for weeks.
The prolonged count has been accompanied by significant institutional turbulence. López Aliaga has alleged fraud and declared that a "coup against democracy" is underway, though no actor has produced supporting evidence. The National Election Jury (JNE), Peru's highest electoral authority, ordered a comprehensive computer audit of the first-round results involving independent national and international experts. The resignation of the head of the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), Piero Corvetto, following logistical failures at polling stations in Lima — including ballot boxes found in a rubbish skip — deepened the climate of mistrust. The European Union observation mission noted "serious failings" but said it had found "no objective proof" of fraud. The JNE has rejected López Aliaga's request for a new vote in Lima and confirmed the 7 June runoff date.
Both candidates arrive at the runoff carrying the weight of controversial political legacies. Fujimori, 50, has made a notable strategic shift for this fourth campaign, openly embracing the memory of her father, who was convicted of corruption, crimes against humanity and espionage before his death in 2024. "I want to be president so I can govern as my father did," she said days before the first round, and visited the family tomb on election day. Sánchez, a psychologist and former minister under Castillo, has leaned equally hard into his mentor's image, entering his closing rally on horseback wearing a wide-brimmed hat, accompanied by Castillo's brother José and niece Yenifer Paredes. His central pledge is to pardon Castillo, who is serving an eleven-year, five-month sentence for the failed self-coup he attempted on 7 December 2022. Sánchez's support is concentrated in the southern Andes and rural Peru, while Fujimori retains her stronghold in Lima.
A late-April Ipsos poll placed both candidates in a statistical tie at 38%, with a striking 17% of respondents saying they intended to cast blank or spoiled ballots — a sign of deep voter disillusionment. Political scientist José Alejandro Godoy describes the moment as "the best scenario Keiko Fujimori has had in fifteen years," noting that the anti-fujimorismo movement has weakened and her father is no longer a source of internal friction within her party. Yet he cautions that she "carries her own anti-vote" after a decade of leading her congressional bloc through a period of intense institutional instability. Alonso Cárdenas, a political scientist at the Antonio Ruiz de Montoya University in Lima, draws a pointed comparison between the two candidates' mentors: Alberto Fujimori's 1992 self-coup gave rise to "one of the most corrupt governments in world history," he argues, while Castillo's 2022 attempt was "a botched effort that ended in farce." With both candidates defined as much by their political inheritance as by their own platforms, the June vote looks set to be a referendum on Peru's turbulent recent past as much as its future direction.