Nearly half of Peru’s official vote count remained outstanding on Monday as frustration grew over widespread disruptions to Sunday’s general election, with conservative Keiko Fujimori in the lead and a June runoff increasingly likely.
In Lima, long lines formed outside polling stations as commuters returned to vote for president and a new bicameral Congress after their ballots never arrived the day before.
The official count from electoral authority ONPE showed that former congresswoman Fujimori– daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, who was imprisoned for human rights abuses – was leading with about 17% of the vote, followed by right‑wing former Lima Mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga on roughly 15% and center‑left candidate Jorge Nieto in third place with around 14%. Just over 54% of the votes had been counted.
With no clear frontrunner and none of the leading candidates near the 50% required to win outright, a June 7 runoff looks highly likely, prolonging political uncertainty in the world’s third‑largest copper producer amid rising crime levels and intensifying geopolitical competition between the United States and China.
Voting hours were extended by one more day until 6 p.m. local time on Monday for more than 50,000 people who were unable to cast ballots on Sunday. The opening of some polling stations was delayed in some areas of the capital Lima due to logistical problems that officials blamed on the distribution of voting materials.
Jose Samame, ONPE’s managing director, accepted responsibility for the delays, tendered his resignation and was later detained by police amid an investigation into the failures.
At a polling station in the Lima district of San Juan de Miraflores, Angela Rios returned to another day of long lines.
“This is an injustice,” she said while waiting to cast her ballot. “Yesterday we waited in line, and today we all have to work. No one is going to compensate us for our day.”
The electoral authority had expected to have 60% of results by midnight on Sunday, a level that has yet to be reached, leaving open the possibility of a sharp swing as votes from the interior of the country are counted.
Ballots from Lima, which typically arrive first, account for about a third of the electorate, where both Fujimori and Lopez Aliaga command strong bases of support.
With margins so tight and any of four candidates with a chance of reaching a runoff, the logistical failures risk fueling fraud allegations, said Nicholas Watson at consultancy Teneo.
“Any candidate who narrowly misses out on second place will be able to argue that they missed out on a berth in the runoff because of the ONPE’s incompetence,” Watson said.
Fujimori said there was still “a lot of ground to cover” and a great deal of disillusionment as the country approaches a second round, addressing journalists from her car on Monday en route to meet her daughters.
Lopez Aliaga, the face of the Popular Renewal party who goes by the nickname “Porky” after the cartoon character Porky Pig, said he would not allow a “brutal fraud,” arguing that most of the polling stations that failed to operate were in Lima, where his support has traditionally been strongest.
Nieto, who was placing third in partial counts, is a former center-left minister whose support had been rising in pre-election polls.
Exit polls on Sunday had placed Fujimori in the lead, although Lopez Aliaga briefly moved ahead earlier in the official count, underscoring how tight and fluid the race remains.
Years of political turmoil in the Andean nation have eroded confidence in institutions and left many voters deeply disillusioned.
Since 2018, Peru has had eight presidents, fueling skepticism that any incoming administration will last a full five‑year term amid repeated impeachments, corruption scandals and fragile governing coalitions.
Several business associations expressed concern over the election uncertainty.
“These incidents affect not only the presidential election, but also the Senate race and elections for other authorities,” the main business association representing Peru’s private sector, CONFIEP, said in a statement on Monday.
© Thomson Reuters 2026.
