Peru's National Jury of Elections (JNE) formally declared Keiko Fujimori the winner of the country's presidential race on Friday, ending a tense, drawn-out count that lasted nearly four weeks after the 7 June runoff. The 51-year-old conservative politician, daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, succeeds in her fourth attempt at the country's highest office.
According to Reuters, with 100% of ballots tallied, Fujimori received 9,223,000 votes, or 50.135% of the total, against leftist congressman Roberto Sánchez's 9,173,000, or 49.865%. The margin of roughly 50,000 votes across a nationwide electorate of 27.3 million is among the narrowest in Peruvian electoral history. It is the third successive presidential election in the country decided by less than one percentage point.
A country split almost exactly in two
The geography of the vote underlines how polarised Peru remains. Sánchez drew strong support from rural and Indigenous voters in the south and the highlands, while Fujimori performed well in Lima and, critically, among the diaspora abroad. Al Jazeera reports that overseas votes proved decisive for Fujimori's final margin, adding to the controversy that followed the result.
“"The result reflects the country's divisions. Whoever wins will have half the country against them." — Paulo Vilca, political analyst, Peruvian Studies Institute”
Sánchez, a former cabinet member under imprisoned ex-president Pedro Castillo, has refused to recognise the outcome. He has taken his case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and announced plans to organise what he calls a political and social resistance front. Election monitors, however, have cautioned that no proof of vote irregularities has emerged.
A historic first, and an immediate test
Fujimori will become Peru's first elected female president when she is sworn in on 28 July, Peru's independence day. She will also be the country's ninth head of state in ten years, a figure that illustrates the chronic instability that has marked Peruvian politics since at least 2016 and that analysts warn is unlikely to ease. As Americas Quarterly noted, only 11% of the overall electorate voted for Fujimori in the first round, leaving her with a narrow mandate to govern a fragmented nation.
Her campaign centred on tackling organised crime, including rising extortion, kidnappings and contract killings. That message appeared to resonate at a moment when security had overtaken economic anxiety as the defining concern for many voters. Her victory is also expected to preserve the market-oriented economic framework her father put in place in the 1990s, which helped produce some of the fastest growth in Latin America over subsequent decades.
“"A new stage begins," Fujimori wrote on X on Friday. "We assume it with responsibility, humility, and a deep sense of duty."”
A newly bicameral Congress adds complexity
Fujimori will govern alongside a substantially reformed legislature. For the first time since her father dissolved it in a 1992 self-coup, Peru's Congress will return to a bicameral structure, with a newly reconstituted Senate sitting alongside the Chamber of Deputies. The incoming Senate's 60 seats are divided between Fujimori's Fuerza Popular party, Sánchez's Juntos por el Peru, and their respective allies, meaning no single bloc commands a majority. Analysts at Americas Quarterly warn that five more years of political instability now appear almost certain, regardless of the election's outcome.
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