Peru’s ballot count drags on amid frustration with presidential election

“The ballot papers do not lie,” he said.

Growing mistrust

While the election was marked by logistical failures, particularly around the capital city of Lima, election observers have said that they have yet to see concrete evidence of fraud.

“It is clear that there have been serious problems,” Annalisa Corrado, head of the European Union Election Observation Mission to Peru, said in a news conference on Tuesday.

She cautioned that observers have “not found objective elements to support the narrative of fraud”.

Sunday’s presidential election was the first since 2022, when left-wing leader Pedro Castillo beat Fujimori, now a four-time candidate.

But roughly a year and a half into his term, Castillo faced impeachment hearings and responded by attempting to dissolve Congress. He was subsequently imprisoned, and the following two presidents — Dina Boluarte and Jose Jeri — were removed from office over corruption charges.

The result has been growing rates of disillusionment among Peruvians about the state of the country’s democracy.

A poll published in March from the Institute for Peruvian Studies (IEP) and the Institute Bartolome de las Casas (IBC) found that about 84 percent of respondents said that they were unsatisfied or very unsatisfied with how democracy was functioning in Peru.

Some 74 percent also said the country’s frequent changes in presidents has taken a toll on the country’s democracy.

Part of the survey asked respondents how they would rank the current situation in comparison to other periods of crisis in Peru’s modern history, including its bloody civil conflict in the 1990s, hyperinflation and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Roughly 69 percent of respondents said the current crisis was just as bad or worse.

Even before the confusion surrounding election day, about 68 percent of respondents said that they had little to no trust in institutions tasked with overseeing the country’s elections, such as the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) and National Jury of Elections (JNE).

Since voting took place on Sunday, Peruvians have expressed disappointment with the electoral process and suggested that it could further dim their faith.

“It’s been a major democratic failure,” 60-year-old Luis Gomez, who is self-employed, told AFP.

Such frustrations may be compounded by rising concern about issues such as crime and corruption. Critics have argued that the government has struggled to cope with rising violence and influence from illicit groups amid the heightened political turbulence of the past decade, stretching back to 2016.

An October 2025 Ipsos poll found that corruption and insecurity ranked as the biggest concerns for voters, with the country’s political crisis ranking third.