Peru’s presidential runoff is set for June 7, with Keiko Fujimori and Roberto Sánchez advancing after the country’s election authorities released the final results of the April 12 vote, according to the count made available Friday. The two will compete to become Peru’s ninth president in just 10 years, as many voters express deep dissatisfaction with leaders and accuse candidates of dishonesty and lack of readiness for the presidency.
The runoff comes against a backdrop of surging violent crime and corruption. The AP report said that both Fujimori and Sánchez campaigned on security and crime, presenting proposals aimed at reducing violence and responding to public anger over corruption.
According to the final vote tally, Fujimori of Fuerza Popular finished first with 17.18% of the vote, and Sánchez of Juntos por el Perú finished second with 12.03%. The report also said election results were confirmed with 100% of ballots counted from the April 12 election.
The April vote was also marked by logistical problems that left many people, including Peruvians living abroad, unable to cast ballots on Sunday. Authorities later allowed additional voting on Monday for more than 52,000 residents of Lima, and the extension also covered Peruvians registered to vote in Orlando, Florida, and Paterson, New Jersey.
During the runoff campaign, crime and security proposals became a central theme across candidates, the report said. Many contenders addressed concerns about criminal violence with proposals that included building large prisons, restricting food for prisoners, and reinstating the death penalty for serious crimes.
Fujimori, who is seeking the presidency for the fourth time, spoke Friday from Peru’s coastal La Libertad region. She highlighted her father’s legacy, including a period when, she said, his administration defeated the Shining Path rebel group and halted hyperinflation in the early 1990s, and she pledged to apply similar resolve to Peru’s modern security challenges.
In her remarks, Fujimori said she would aim to crush crime so Peruvians can “live in peace.” She has also pledged to crack down with an “iron fist,” while defending laws her party backed that experts have said make it difficult to prosecute criminals, including changes that eliminated preliminary detention in certain cases and raised the threshold for seizing criminal assets.
Sánchez, speaking after the vote count concluded, argued for political unity to confront crime. He called for a “grand democratic coalition” to defeat what he said was a criminal underworld aligned with the “political mafia” in Congress, which he said includes Fujimori’s party.
Sánchez also used cultural symbolism in his remarks, adding that his traditional peasant hat is “the expression of all hats and of the diversity” of Peru. The report said he separately promised to repeal laws that analysts and experts said would limit prosecutions, and he pledged to strengthen police intelligence capabilities to combat extortion, which he said has increased fivefold in five years.
Outside security, Sánchez differentiated himself during the campaign with economic proposals that he said would change how Peru deals with mining. The report said he has argued for renegotiating contracts with mining companies and for a larger tax take by the state, and he said rural communities should receive a share of mines operating in their territory and that he opposes open-pit mining.
The report said these reforms would likely face obstacles because Sánchez does not have a congressional majority. It added that Peru’s economy has continued to grow despite political instability and crime, helped by its role as the world’s second-largest copper producer, and that the country posted more than 3% growth in 2024 and 2025.
Ahead of the June 7 runoff, the campaign’s contrast is also shaped by political experience and organization. Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Fujimori is “perhaps Peru’s only remaining career politician and the only one with a real political party,” suggesting her nationwide organization could help her address crime, though Freeman said he expects her to proceed selectively.
Freeman also pointed to a record tied to anti-corruption and anti-organized-crime legislation, saying Fujimori and her party previously sponsored legislation against organized crime that “ironically created many of the tools that prosecutors used to investigate them in the 2010s,” and that those mechanisms were later dismantled as Fujimori’s political allies shifted to destroy “a lot of those mechanisms in the legislation.”
The winner of the June 7 runoff will take office on July 28 for a five-year term, according to the report.