In one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Peru's electoral history, Keiko Fujimori has overtaken Roberto Sánchez in the presidential runoff, seizing a lead of just 651 votes after trailing by more than 40,000 only a day earlier.
As of the ONPE official count with about 98% of tally sheets processed, Fujimori holds 50.002% to Sánchez's 49.998% — a margin of four ten-thousandths of a point. The lead changed hands at around 1:00 a.m. on Thursday, June 11, after a count that had see-sawed for four days but had never before crossed from one candidate to the other.
The reversal caps an extraordinary swing. With 98.215% of the vote counted, Sánchez had led by just over 40,000 votes, 50.12% to Fujimori's 49.88%, even as Fujimori had earlier closed to within 0.1% as foreign ballots fell largely in her favor. Days earlier, with nearly 95% tallied, Sánchez had surged to 50.10% as the final ballots came in from rural areas, where he dominated throughout the campaign. The remaining overseas and late-arriving ballots — a bloc that broke heavily for Fujimori — steadily eroded that lead and finally overturned it overnight.
If it holds, it would be the narrowest presidential margin in Peru's modern history, dwarfing even the country's recent nail-biters. The result echoes the 2021 runoff, when Fujimori lost to Pedro Castillo by roughly 50.1% to 49.9% — a gap of about 44,000 votes — and the 2016 race she lost to Pedro Pablo Kuczynski by a similar sliver. A lead of 651 votes is a fraction of either.
The drama is far from over. The result is not yet official: roughly 1.785% of tally sheets remain to be processed, and contested ballots are being routed to electoral judges for review — a process that, in a race this close, could decide the presidency on its own. The JNE must still validate the count and formally proclaim a winner, and in 2021 a comparably tight result dragged on for weeks amid nullity challenges. A margin this thin makes recount demands, legal challenges, and fraud allegations from the losing side highly likely.
The stakes for the country are immense. "Whoever wins will have half the country against them," analyst Paulo Vilca of the Peruvian Studies Institute told AFP, capturing a nation split almost exactly down the middle between Fujimori's coastal, urban and overseas base and Sánchez's rural, Andean strongholds. The winner will become Peru's ninth leader in a decade, inheriting a fractured Congress and a restless electorate.
For now, Peru holds its breath. After four days of a count that has flipped expectations again and again, the country's next president may come down to a few hundred ballots — and the final tally sheets still making their way to Lima.
