Peru Runoff Set: Keiko vs López Aliaga, Right vs Right
Key Points
— Peru’s official ballot count at 53% of processed ballots has resolved the quadruple tie for second place: Rafael López Aliaga (14.6%) has pulled decisively ahead of Jorge Nieto (12.8%), Ricardo Belmont (9.8%), and the collapsed Roberto Sánchez (7.9%)—setting up a June 7 runoff between two conservative candidates.
— The exit polls were significantly wrong about second place: Ipsos had Sánchez at 12.1% and López Aliaga at 11%. The official count shows Sánchez at 7.9% (a 4.2-point miss) and López Aliaga at 14.6% (a 3.6-point miss in the other direction). Datum’s rapid count of 300,000 ballots with a 1% margin of error confirms the ordering.
— A Fujimori-López Aliaga runoff forces Peru into an unprecedented choice between two right-wing candidates, potentially alienating the entire left-of-center electorate—and raising the question of who inherits the combined 24% that voted for Sánchez, Álvarez, and López Chau.
The exit polls said left versus right. The ballots say right versus right. Peru’s June 7 runoff will be the first in the country’s modern history without a left-wing candidate.
With 53.2% of official ballots counted by Monday morning, ONPE data shows Keiko Fujimori leading at 16.95% followed by Rafael López Aliaga at 14.6%—a gap of 2.35 percentage points that places the ultraconservative billionaire and former Lima mayor firmly in second position and on course for the June 7 runoff, according to Infobae, Gestión, La República, and CNN en Español. Jorge Nieto holds third at 12.8%, too far back to overtake with remaining votes. The left-wing candidates who were supposed to challenge Fujimori have collapsed: Roberto Sánchez, whom Ipsos had placed second at 12.1% in the Sunday exit poll, has fallen to 7.9% in the actual count—a 4.2 percentage point miss that represents one of the largest exit poll failures in recent Peruvian electoral history.
What the Exit Polls Got Wrong
Datum CEO Urpi Torrado explained the divergence: exit polls (boca de urna) are based on voter interviews with a 3% margin of error, while the rapid count uses approximately 300,000 actual ballot samples with a margin near 1%. The exit poll captured voter intent at polling stations but missed the geographic distribution that official counting reveals as rural and provincial ballots arrive. López Aliaga’s strength outside Lima—where he won the overseas vote and led in several regions—was underrepresented in the exit poll sample. Sánchez’s southern Andean base, which Ipsos had estimated at 27.8% regionally, appears to have turned out at lower rates than projected or split more than anticipated among multiple left-wing candidates including Carlos Álvarez (8.5%) and Alfonso López Chau (7.7%).
Torrado said the 52,251 voters casting ballots on Monday in Lima’s reopened polling stations would shift results “by tenths, but I don’t believe it will change the direction of the results. The person who is fifth or sixth will not move to second place. Each tenth (0.1%) represents approximately 20,000 votes.” The OAS electoral observation mission confirmed the Sunday vote was “peaceful and orderly” but noted delays in mesa installation and the inability to operate in 13 precincts. The mission deployed additional observers for Monday’s extended voting.
Right Versus Right: What It Means
A Fujimori-López Aliaga runoff produces a contest Peru has never seen: two right-wing candidates competing for the presidency with no left-wing option on the ballot. Fujimori represents institutional conservatism through Fuerza Popular, the party her father built, with a platform of judicial modernization, deregulation, and fiscal discipline. López Aliaga represents populist conservatism: an Opus Dei billionaire who modeled himself on Trump and Milei, promising to slash ministries to six, expel Venezuelan migrants, privatize Petroperú, and implement “Bukele-style” security measures. Both are pro-mining, pro-investment, and broadly aligned on economic policy—the differences are of temperament, coalition, and degree rather than ideology.
The strategic question is whether the roughly 24% of voters who backed left-wing candidates (Sánchez, Álvarez, López Chau combined) will participate in a runoff where neither option represents them—or whether they abstain, void their ballots, or reluctantly choose the lesser of two rights. In 2021, Keiko lost to Castillo by 44,000 votes precisely because she could not attract left-of-center voters despite Castillo’s radical platform frightening the middle class. Against López Aliaga, who is further right than she is on immigration and social policy, Fujimori could position herself as the moderate conservative option—an unusual framing for a candidate who has been the right’s standard-bearer for 15 years.
What Markets Watch
Both candidates are broadly pro-investment, which means the runoff outcome is less binary for markets than a Fujimori-Sánchez contest would have been. Peru produces 11.8% of the world’s copper, and as our election guide detailed, S&P Global noted that a right-wing outcome would produce “faster permitting and lower royalty rates.” A Fujimori-López Aliaga runoff guarantees exactly that outcome regardless of who wins. The differences for investors are in governance style: Fujimori would likely manage congressional relationships pragmatically (Fuerza Popular has legislative experience), while López Aliaga’s confrontational approach could produce the same executive-legislative gridlock that has paralyzed every Peruvian president since 2016. Peru also elected its first bicameral Congress in 34 years on Sunday—130 deputies and 60 senators—and the composition of the new Senate will determine whether either president can govern or faces the obstruction machine that has destroyed every administration for a decade. Official results continue to trickle in. The runoff is June 7.
Related Coverage: Peru Election: Keiko Wins First Round, Rival Unknown • Peru Elections 2026: Complete Guide • López Aliaga: Milei Economics, Bukele Security
In depth
Read More from The Rio Times