Peru’s discontented voters face straight left-right choice in election runoff

Peruvians go to the polls on Sunday in an election runoff that pits a perennial rightwing candidate, Keiko Fujimori, against a leftist congressman, Roberto Sánchez. Amid rising crime, chronic political instability, corruption scandals and voter apathy, they are vying to become Peru’s ninth president in a decade.

Fujimori, who is the daughter of the late president Alberto Fujimori, won 17% of the vote in the first round in April. Sánchez, a former trade and tourism minister, took 12 % of the vote, edging out Rafael López Aliaga, an ultra-conservative former Lima mayor. The stage is set for a polarised left-right replay of the country’s last election in 2021.

It is the fourth presidential run by Fujimori and it may be her best chance yet. She was thrust into politics aged 19 when she was named first lady after her parents’ marriage imploded during her father’s authoritarian rule throughout the 1990s.

A surprise second-round contender, Sánchez, 57, served as a minister for the populist leftist president Pedro Castillo and has claimed his legacy, garnering support from rural voters – even donning his trademark sombrero.

Castillo was ousted in December 2022 after trying to dissolve congress and rule by decree. In November 2025, he was sentenced to 11 years and five months in jail for rebellion. Sánchez has picked up votes in the rural Andes, where many identify with Castillo and some believe he was unfairly pushed out of office.

Pollsters predict an extremely tight vote in line with the last three election runoffs in Peru. The candidates are statistically tied, with Sánchez on 43.8% and Fujimori on 43.2%, according to an Ipsos poll published on Thursday.

The election campaign, which started with a record 35 candidates in April, has ended with a choice between two candidates who represent just 29% of the vote.

Voters are exhausted and deeply sceptical after a period of record instability in which Peru has pedalled through eight presidents since July 2016, only three of whom were elected.

The other presidents fell into the role through the vagaries of an unrepresentative congressional system, and were – in most cases – unsuited to the country’s highest office. The last president to be ousted, José Jerí, 39, was accused of influence-trafficking in secretive meetings with Chinese businessmen. He was replaced by the current head of state, José María Balcázar, 83, who is best known for his support for child marriage.

“Politicians have lost a lot of credibility, and very few people trust them any more,” said Santiago Pedraglio, a sociologist and professor at Lima’s Pontifical Catholic University. “If voting weren’t mandatory in Peru, the abstention rate would be much higher.”

More than 6 million Peruvians did not turn out to vote in the first round in April, despite fines for failing to do so. Another 3 million spoiled their ballots in protest, leaving them unreadable or blank. The blank or spoilt ballots would have won the vote.

“The level of popular discontent and mistrust was already high 20 years ago; now it’s through the roof,” Steven Levitsky, a political scientist and professor of government at Harvard University, told the Peruvian newspaper La República last month.

Fujimori carries the legacy of her father, who spent 16 years in jail for authorising kidnappings and murders during his government’s “war against terrorism” before he died in 2024. Though she faces the strong anti-Fujimori movement, she has capitalised on her father’s mano dura (iron fist) reputation, promising a tough-on-crime stance as Peruvians face rocketing rates of extortion and murder.

Pedraglio said some voters feared Fujimori would lead an “authoritarian government and that the separation of powers won’t be respected”. Her Fuerza Popular (Popular Force) party holds more seats than any other party in the country’s congress, which recently reinstated the bicameral system.

Pedraglio said Sánchez had sparked fear among some that he would lead not just a “leftwing government” but a “bad government” like Castillo, who was widely seen as incompetent.

Sánchez has pledged to free Castillo, whom he describes as the victim of a “coup plot”. He also says he wants to restore the government “to the people” and draft a new constitution. However, he has backed down from an earlier pledge to remove the head of the central bank, Julio Velarde.

“The time has come for the true rebirth of our nation: a sovereign, just nation built from the foundations of the Peruvian people,” Sánchez told foreign reporters last month.