Peru on Tuesday marked the second day without definitive results from Sunday’s presidential election that can confirm which of the candidates will head to the upcoming June runoff.
The South American nation’s electorate headed to the polls on Sunday for presidential and legislative elections — marking the first elections Peru has held them since 2021, when Marxist former President Pedro Castillo was elected. Over the past years, Peru has experienced a period of political instability that has seen it have nine different presidents in ten years. A streak of impeachments since the 2021 election facilitated this that began with Castillo being removed from office in December 2022, followed by Dina Boluarte in October 2025, and then interim President Jose Jerí in February.
As the election featured 35 different candidates on the ballot from across the political spectrum, polling firms and forecasts projected that no candidate would be able to cross the required 50-percent vote threshold to be elected in the first round. The country has scheduled a June 8 runoff between the two most-voted candidates.
While the Organization of American States (OAS) said it confirmed that the elections were conducted “peacefully and in an orderly manner,” the election was marred by logistical issues in the deployment of electoral material that left some voting stations facing delays in the start of the process. Reportedly, 13 voting locations in the Lima Metropolitan area unable to operate on Sunday.
As a result, Peru’s top electoral authority, the National Elections Board (JNE), authorized a request from the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) to extend the election through Monday for the voting centers unable to open on Sunday. The situation left Peru without timely results on Sunday or Monday. As of press time, the JNE has still not published results. The OAS nevertheless welcomed the JNE’s decision, as it guaranteed the right to vote for the thousands of citizens who were unable to exercise it on Sunday in Lima.
The most recent update published by ONPE as of Tuesday morning at 09:30 a.m. (EST) indicate that, with 74.95 percent of the votes of the votes counted, conservative former first lady and former Senator Keiko Fujimori of the Popular Force party is leading the race with 16.88 percent of the votes.
Conservative former mayor of Lima Rafael López Aliaga of the Popular Renovation party is presently in second place with 12.8 percent of the votes, and former Minister Jorge Nieto Montesinos of the centrist Party of Good Government in a close third place with 11.87 percent.
While ONPE and Peruvian polling firms Ipsos and Datum have reportedly forecast that Fujimori will head to the runoff, her prospective rival remains uncertain as of Tuesday morning after it was initially reported that the runoff was projected to unfold between Fujimori and López Aliaga, both conservatives.
Peruvian outlets reported that, according to an exit poll conducted by Ipsos and the Transparencia Peru civil association, there is a “technical tree-way tie” for the second place between López Aliaga, Nieto Montesinos, and lawmaker Roberto Sánchez Palomino of the center-left Together for Peru party, who is currently in fourth place as per ONPE’s official preliminary results.
“Based on these results, it is clear that candidate Keiko Fujimori maintains a clear lead over the other candidates, even when taking into account the margin of error for both candidates,” Alvaro Henzler, president of Transparencia Peru, reportedly said. “This allows us to state, with a high degree of statistical confidence, that candidate Fujimori would finish in first place and advance to the runoff election.”
According to Henzler, in terms of the second place for the runoff, “there is an overlap between the estimated vote shares of candidates Roberto Sánchez, Rafael López Aliaga, and Jorge Nieto,” so it is “not yet possible to determine” which of them would advance to the runoff against Fujimori.
“This overlap indicates a technical tie, so, based on the information available at this time, it is not possible to determine which of these candidates would take second place and advance to a runoff in June. In this context, we must wait calmly and patiently for the official results to determine which of these candidates will join Fujimori in the runoff,” he said.
Peru’s National Board of Justice (JNJ) announced on Tuesday morning that it unanimously decided to launch a probe against ONPE’s chief, Piero Corvetto, over the “deficient” performance that the Peruvian electoral institution had on Sunday that resulted in delays on the deployment of electoral material on election day and that prevented over 50,000 individuals from being able to cast a vote on Sunday. JNJ sources told the newspaper El Comercio that the probe will last 30 business day until May 26 and, should the board determine that disciplinary proceedings are warranted, Corvetto could be suspended from his position.
Similarly, the National Elections Board announced on Tuesday that it filed a criminal complaint against Covertto and three other electoral officials at the Public Prosecutor’s Office over the incidents that affected Sunday’s election.
Peruvian criminal defense attorney Carlos Caro explained RPP that the complaint alleges three specific crimes defined in both the Penal Code and the Organic Law on Elections, “dereliction of duty, violation of the right to vote, and obstruction of the electoral process.”
“We are dealing with clearly intentional crimes, and I believe that will be the main point of contention. Gross negligence is evident everywhere,” Caro said. “The question is whether there is sufficient evidence to establish criminal liability, because there are no crimes of negligence, culpability, or recklessness in the electoral sphere.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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