It’s been nine days since the runoff election between conservative candidate Keiko Fujimori and leftist Roberto Sánchez and Peruvians are still awaiting a definitive result in what’s become a razor-tight election.
As of June 15, Fujimori continued to edge ahead with 50.051% of the vote compared to Sánchez’s 49.949% – a difference of about 18,300 votes, reported Reuters.
About 98.59% of votes had been counted as of Monday.
In the first three days after the elections, Sánchez held a slight advantage, but when the overseas ballots began arriving in the capital last Wednesday, the results flipped as Fujimori took a slight lead. Overseas ballots have historically favored conservative candidates.
However, the National Jury of Elections (JNE), Peru’s top electoral tribunal, reiterated last Tuesday that final results are not expected until mid-July.
Peruvians, however, are not unfamiliar with uncertainty in elections. In 2021, it took 43 days to officially declare Pedro Castillo president-elect after Keiko Fujimori filed hundreds of legal challenges alleging fraud. Castillo ultimately won by just 44,000 votes out of more than 17 million cast.
Fujimori, the daughter of former authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori, leads the right-wing Fuerza Popular party and is making her fourth presidential bid after reaching the runoff in each of her previous three campaigns.
Sánchez, her opponent, is a leftist congressman who built his campaign around tackling inequality and the deep socioeconomic divide between the capital Lima and rural Peru.
He has been billed as the torch-bearer for the political movement of jailed former President Castillo, with controversial ties to Antauro Humala, a former Peruvian army major and founder of the ethnocacerist movement, known for the “Andahuaylazo” military uprising in 2005.
Alfredo Torres, director of Ipsos Peru, a polling firm, warned early last week that the overseas vote could shift the result in Fujimori’s favor.
Both candidates have called for calm while awaiting the final count.
On June 7, election night, Sánchez celebrated with supporters after Ipsos and Datum’s rapid counts showed him narrowly ahead.
Since then, as Fujimori has taken the lead, his party, Juntos por el Perú, has alleged “electoral fraud” and requested the annulment of 2,400 polling stations where Fujimori has the upper hand due to alleged “identical vote repetition patterns”.
Ernesto Zunini, the political party’s secretary-general, doubled down yet again and called for composure, saying they will accept the citizens’ vote.
Fujimori told supporters to wait with “patience and serenity.” On Tuesday, she expressed cautious optimism, saying her team’s statistical analysis pointed to “a lot of hope” in the overseas vote and the disputed ballot boxes — the majority of which are from Lima — though she stopped short of claiming victory.
“It would be very premature to declare a winner. It is my duty to wait,” she said.
Jorge Valdivia, the spokesperson for JNE, said authorities were still working through the disputed ballot records and other obstacles filed by both parties. According to the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), which administers the official vote count, 1,635 ballot records remain pending review by the Special Electoral Juries (JEE), which began counting on Friday.
The JNE also confirmed there was no evidence of fraud. ONPE said the remaining votes would continue to be processed as electoral authorities review disputed ballot records and legal challenges.
The European Union’s electoral observation mission echoed that assessment. Mission chief Annalisa Corrado said the EU deployed 150 observers across the country since late February to monitor the vote in line with Peruvian law and international standards. Adding that the mission would continue to observe the final stages of the process and present its definitive report in August.
The close result was largely in line with pre-election polling. The last Ipsos poll before the election, published on May 31, showed Fujimori with a narrow lead of 38% against Sánchez’s 35% — a three-point gap that fell within the margin of error, making the outcome too close to predict.
Featured image: Peruvians await results of June 7 presidential elections.
Image credit: ONPE via Facebook.