Peru's polarizing presidential runoff between hard-right candidate Keiko Fujimori and leftist challenger Roberto Sánchez opened Sunday across nearly 200,000 polling stations, with voters in Lima's high-rise districts and the remote Andean highlands choosing between two fundamentally different visions for a country still struggling to emerge from years of constitutional crisis and institutional collapse.
Two Candidates, Two Visions of Peru
Fujimori, the daughter of former strongman Alberto Fujimori and the leader of the conservative Fuerza Popular party, is making her fourth bid for the presidency. She finished first in the April 12 first round with 17.19 percent of the vote—in a 35-candidate field where no one came close to a majority—and has campaigned on a law-and-order platform centered on fighting organized crime, hardening border security against cross-border gang networks, and reversing what she characterizes as drift toward leftist economic policy in public institutions. If she wins, she would become Peru's first female president.
Sánchez, a former minister of trade and tourism and a close ally of jailed ex-president Pedro Castillo, secured second place in April with 12.03 percent. His platform emphasizes political reform, social inclusion, and greater state investment in public services for Peru's highland and Amazonian communities—regions that have historically felt left behind by Lima's economic growth. He has pledged not to seek a constitutional overhaul, a sensitive assurance in a country where Castillo's attempt to dissolve Congress before his impeachment in 2022 remains a raw wound in the national memory.
An Election Shaped by Instability
The vote takes place against a backdrop of exceptional political dysfunction. Peru has had six presidents in the last decade. Corruption charges have followed nearly every major political figure in the country, including both candidates in Sunday's runoff. Fujimori has faced multiple criminal proceedings related to alleged campaign finance fraud, charges she has consistently denied. Sánchez has faced questions about his association with Castillo's administration, which ended in a botched self-coup attempt before Congress removed him from office.
"Peruvians are not voting for someone they trust," a political analyst at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú told Al Jazeera ahead of the vote. "They are voting against the candidate they fear more."
Pre-election polling showed the race within the margin of error—a statistical tie that reflects how evenly, and how deeply, the country is divided along regional, economic, and generational lines. Lima's urban middle class has leaned toward Fujimori, while rural provinces and highland departments have tilted toward Sánchez in patterns that echo the country's 2021 runoff between Pedro Castillo and—again—Keiko Fujimori.
What Each Victory Would Mean
A Fujimori presidency would almost certainly accelerate Peru's economic alignment with its Pacific Alliance partners—Chile, Colombia, and Mexico—while hardening immigration enforcement and expanding the role of the security forces in fighting the criminal networks that have overtaken parts of the country's northern coast. Foreign investors, rattled by years of political risk, have signaled cautious optimism about her economic agenda, particularly around stability in the mining and energy sectors.
A Sánchez victory would raise immediate questions about whether his coalition—assembled from left-wing parties with very different internal agendas—can govern coherently. His pledge to increase state investment in rural infrastructure and to revise mining royalties has prompted concern in Peru's mining sector, which accounts for roughly 10 percent of GDP according to World Bank data and underpins a significant share of the country's export revenues.
The Weight of the Fujimori Name
No factor shapes this election more than memory. Alberto Fujimori, who ruled from 1990 to 2000, remains one of Latin America's most historically contested figures—credited by supporters with defeating the Shining Path guerrilla movement and stabilizing a hyperinflationary economy; condemned by human rights organizations for the systematic use of forced sterilizations and extrajudicial killings during his tenure. He died in September 2023 while serving a prison sentence for crimes against humanity.
For Peruvians under 35, the Fujimori era is history. For those over 50, it is memory—either nightmare or salvation, depending on whom you ask. Those two competing recollections have defined every election Keiko has run in, and they will define this one too. Results were expected Sunday evening, Lima time.