Roberto Sánchez edges López Aliaga by 24,174 votes in Peru
peru’s Roberto Sánchez Palomino moved into second place in the April 12 presidential vote after the National Office of Electoral Processes had counted 95.97 percent of the ballots two weeks later. He finished 24,174 votes ahead of Rafael López Aliaga, narrowing the fight for the runoff as the count approached completion.
Keiko Fujimori led the field with 2,753,825 votes, or 17.06 percent. Sánchez of Together for Peru had 1,943,155 votes, or 12.04 percent, while López Aliaga of Popular Renewal had 1,918,981 votes, or 11.89 percent.
ONPE count and runoff margin
The gap between Sánchez and López Aliaga was the clearest change in the count. Sánchez’s lead turned a contested second place into the line between advancing and falling out of Peru’s runoff race, with June 7 named as the second-round date in the source material.
The vote also carried an unusually large protest signal. Of 27.3 million Peruvians eligible to vote, 8.4 million cast null votes, blank votes, or did not vote. That amounted to 30.8 percent of the electorate and left a large share of the country outside the three-way contest that dominated the count.
Fujimori, Sánchez, López Aliaga
The first-round pattern also split by region. Pedro Castillo and Sánchez both won in the departments of the highlands in the comparison described in the source material, while Fujimori won in the coastal-Andean department of La Libertad and in the central highlands of Junín. Sánchez lost in Arequipa to Jorge Nieto of the Good Government Party and lost in Tacna to Ricardo Belmont.
That mix of results fed the sharper political atmosphere around the count. Front-page headlines used the words “Fraud,” “ONPE’s incompetence in counting votes,” and “New election,” while television news programs warned about “a new Castillo in the presidency.”
Peru’s protest vote
The vote unfolded after twelve months of growing class conflict and repeated transportation strikes in Lima and Callao, including more than a dozen 24-hour public transportation strikes in those cities. The source also says 60,000 EsSalud workers held a two-week strike in July 2025, and university students and Gen Z youth had recently protested in Lima and other cities.
For Peruvians who backed Sánchez or watched the count shift, the immediate issue is whether the late margin holds as the tally closes. With 95.97 percent counted, the runoff field had effectively been reduced to the final separation between Sánchez and López Aliaga, and the June 7 round now sits on that result.
