In the April 2026 presidential elections in Peru there was a total of 35 candidates. As we approach the runoff vote on the top two candidates, Peruvians are going to be choosing between Keiko Fujimori and her opponent Roberto Sánchez. Both politicians are well-established and experienced figures that represent disparate forms of populism. But despite their political credentials and affiliation with major political parties, neither candidate surpassed 20% of the popular vote (17.14% for Fujimori and 12.04% for Sánchez). Broadly, Peru has been struggling with low voter satisfaction, low party alignment and extremely low-mandate elections since the 2021 election that likewise saw neither candidate surpass 20% electoral support in the first round. Understanding why Peruvian presidents continue to be broadly unpopular requires understanding how voter satisfaction and party alignment have degraded since 2016 and how a hyper-fractionalized system impacts presidential elections.

Though parties in Peru exist around specific political cleavages, none of these are more salient and impactful than the rural-urban divide. Politicians in Peru, particularly populist leaders like Castillo and Sánchez relied heavily on the Peru profundo messaging of a corrupt Lima-centered elite that victimized the rural/indigenous communities of the Andean highlands. Among these rural voters, satisfaction with democratic institutions briefly spiked when Castillo came into office in 2021 and subsequently plummeted following his ouster. Voters in these regions often have high turnouts and rock-bottom satisfaction with the democratic institutions for which they vote. Qualitative data has shown disapproval of the legislative and executive branches exceeding 90% in rural communities. This reinforces how ripe the rural communities are for a populist candidate, and how likely they are to support anti-democratic behavior from said candidate. This is the voter base that Sánchez sought to capture in his first-round campaign—hence the mirroring of Castillo’s slogans and political persona.

But Keiko Fujimori occupies a different space in the political sphere. She seeks to convince voters that the problems with the economy, government and crime are due to left-wing political actors. Instead of positioning herself on that dominant cleavage of indigeneity, Fujimori’s populism relies on broader dissatisfaction with the current political framework. However, this will demand that voters ignore her own political record. Having run for president on four separate occasions, getting into the second round on all of these attempts. Though she tends to receive the largest portion of the vote in each first round, voters generally coalesce together to ensure she does not end up gaining a majority in the second round. Because of how Peruvian democracy tends to play out, voters are less directly supportive of her opposition than they are actively rejecting her as the president.

Pursuant to recent polling data and this broader electoral trend, Peru is likely to elect another president that got less than 20% popular support in the first round to avoid the ‘worse’ option of choosing to put another Fujimori in office. While voters tend be to losing interest in democracy across the board in Peru, the electoral system perpetuates this same situation. Because a candidate can win an election without large-scale support by running against someone who is almost certainly going to lose, executive support in Peru is bottoming out in a major way. This means not only have populist figures been able to mobilize the bare minimum level of support to pass the first round, but they are also getting elected by a populus who has both lost interest in politics and distrusts their government.

Despite the intent, mandatory voting will not be enough to override the low levels of voter satisfaction, or to promise solid electoral mandates. This is exemplified across the region, where states with mandatory voting tend to show lower levels of voter satisfaction. But more than mandatory voting being a commonplace in the degradation of democracy, Peru is tending towards a form of legislative aggrandizement. Peru operates on a proportional representation system in their national assembly. This means that while the Fujimorista bloc may not be able to gain enough support to capture the executive, they are certainly able to hold a wealth of seats in the congress. While the majority of Peruvians either prefers another party or do not vote (82% report no party alignment), FP and their coalition have remained a mainstay in the congress for over a decade. During the 2016-2019 period, when FP itself had an absolute majority without coalition support, they were able to crush the power of the executive and censure its ministers.

Because of the inherent volatility of the legislature in a proportional representation system, we would expect to see FP passing in and out of power every election. But they have retained just enough support in a system defined by micro-coalitions that they are able to exercise immense power. Due to this power, FP has been able to debilitate the executive and pack the judiciary. The primary tool in this effort is the “permanent moral incapacity” clause, weaponized to facilitate the rapid turnover of nine presidents in ten years. This has fundamentally undermined the ability of political institutions to hold one another accountable. In this system, the executive and judiciary have been maimed.

As the nation pivots toward the June runoff, the choice has narrowed to a familiar, polarizing dyad. Both candidates represent similarly unfortunate prospects. If Fujimori comes to power, it will lay down the final piece in FP’s pursuit of complete governmental capture. This would mean the very same party that has spent a decade struggling to keep the executive in line, now controls the executive in its entirety. Instead of an executive and legislative branch that are clashing to ensure overall gridlock, the executive would fall in-step with FP’s overhaul of the legislative process. Given Fujimori’s platform and political resume, this would likely result in complete power consolidation and a constitutional assembly that makes said corrupt institutions permanent.
Whereas Sánchez winning the election may prove to continue the cycle of vengeance that has defined the relationship between the legislature and executive since 2016. Inheriting an office that was hollowed out by the Fujimorista bloc would leave the Sánchez presidency ineffectual. Further, this election has given FP another powerful enough legislative mandate to continue down the road of legislative power capture. Rather than signaling a ‘new age’ in democracy for Peru, Sánchez is going to inherit a very similar executive to that of Castillo. Except, this congress is likely to be more hostile and more liberal with their weaponization of the “permanent moral incapacity” clause.
The real problem of the 2026 election is that the democratic process itself has only served to perpetuate instability. This process of forcing a dissatisfied electorate to decide between the captor of institutions and an ineffectual outsider candidate ensures the continued degradation of Peru’s institutions, leaving them in a perpetual state of emergency. As long as the legislature retains the ability to remove presidents at will, and if the electorate continues to be defined by distrustful and indifferent voters, Peru will continue sliding towards a stable autocracy. In this way, nobody wins in the 2026 election, least of all the Peruvian voters.