Key Points
The ballot paper for Peru’s April 12 presidential election is the size of a small television. It has to be — it needs to fit 36 candidates, most of whom the country’s 27 million voters have never heard of and none of whom they particularly trust.
A Historic Field, A Historic Apathy
No country in Latin America comes close. Chile’s last presidential election had eight candidates. Ecuador had sixteen. Argentina had five. Even Costa Rica, the region’s closest comparison, topped out at twenty.
And yet, according to pollster Datum Internacional, 42.5% of voters still have no idea who they will choose. In the 2016 election that produced Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, only 14% were undecided at this stage. In 2021, when Pedro Castillo shocked the country by defeating Keiko Fujimori, the figure was 33%. The trend is moving in the wrong direction.
Catalina Quinto, editor of RPP’s electoral platform, described the campaign as “atypical, cold, and difficult to read,” shaped by deep saturation and apathy. There are no clear leaders, and some candidacies include people with serious judicial records.
Who Is Leading
Rafael López Aliaga, the ultraconservative railway and hotel magnate who resigned as mayor of Lima to run, leads Datum’s poll at 11.9%. His appeal rests on a hard-line security message and deep connections to Catholic and Evangelical voters. He has drawn comparisons to Donald Trump and openly admires El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. He finished third in 2021.
Keiko Fujimori follows at 9.2%, running for a fourth time. The daughter of former dictator Alberto Fujimori, she lost three consecutive runoffs by narrow margins and has been accused of destabilizing the country through her party’s congressional majority. Her campaign now targets 6.87 million young voters who never lived through her father’s regime.
Third is Carlos Álvarez, a comedian, at 5.8%. He initially ran on a tough-on-crime platform but has pivoted to humor, parodying former President Jerí’s scandals and even dressing up as Pope Leo XIV.
Twenty-four of the thirty-six candidates poll below 1%. Sixteen do not reach 0.5%.
The Curse That Won’t Break
The election arrives after yet another presidential implosion. On February 17, Congress removed José Jerí by a 75-to-24 censure vote after just four months in office. His crime: secret meetings with a Chinese businessman, one of which he attended wearing a hoodie at a Lima restaurant. The scandal was nicknamed “Chifa-gate.” Jerí was Peru’s eighth president in less than a decade.
His replacement, left-wing lawmaker José María Balcázar, governs until the inauguration in July. His party, Perú Libre, identifies as Marxist. A study by Arellano Consultoría found that only one in four Peruvians actively informs themselves about politics, and most decide their vote in the final week — or while standing in line.
The ballot may be enormous, but for most Peruvians, the real question is not which name to mark. It is whether any of them will matter at all.