🃏 Outsiders could win in Peru

Of the 36 candidates who originally signed up for Peru’s presidential election, scheduled to take place this weekend, one passed away during the campaign, and a couple dozen more have barely had a look-in.

The remaining group had been led by two traditional right-wing candidates, Keiko Fujimori and Rafael López Aliaga, whose unimpressive early polling numbers we discussed in last week’s edition. 

But in a fragmented and unstable political landscape with weak parties and multiple heads of state ousted over the last decade, many Peruvians only begin to think through their options in the days before the vote. That was the case in 2021, with the late rise of left-wing teacher Pedro Castillo, who surged among the rural electorate to reach the runoff and ultimately beat the polarizing Fujimori…

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