LIMA, Peru — The race to take on conservative Keiko Fujimori in Peru’s presidential runoff remained deadlocked Monday, with thousands of Peruvians still voting because of logistical mishaps a day earlier.

A fresh quick count by pollster Ipsos has Fujimori leading the first round with 17.1%. Leftist lawmaker Roberto Sánchez was second with 12.4%, while another conservative, Rafael López Aliaga, placed third and center-right sociologist Jorge Nieto was fourth. The pollster warned that the trio were in a statistical tie to advance to the runoff.

“The order could invert itself and any of them could make the runoff,” said Alfredo Torres, the head of Ipsos in Peru.

The too-close-to-call scenario leaves the political future of Peru still wide open, dragging out an election that was supposed to bring an end to the Andean country’s chronic upheaval.

A second-place finish for Sánchez, who has promised to pardon imprisoned former President Pedro Castillo and seek a rewrite of Peru’s market-friendly constitution, would likely unnerve investors.

“Fujimori versus Sánchez could trigger initial volatility, but limited legislative support for the Left would likely thwart any disruptive policy agenda,” said Luis Ramos, head of equity research at brokerage LarrainVial in a note. “Fujimori versus López Aliaga would likely be read as constructive, with a more market-friendly tilt and stronger governability.”

The quick count contrasted with the ongoing official tally, which had about 59% of votes tallied shortly after the polling sites that opened on Monday closed at 6 p.m.

Four-time candidate Fujimori held a tenuous lead, with about 17% support, followed by López Aliaga and Nieto in third. Sánchez had risen to fifth place, with about 8.5%, up a spot from earlier in the day, with many votes in rural areas where he has strongest support yet to be counted.

Even while authorities continued to publish tallies from ballots cast Sunday across the country, a smattering of polling places in the capital Lima had reopened on Monday. Authorities said the transport company hired to deliver voting materials failed to do its job on election day, leaving 52,000 people unable to vote. Polling sites also opened for expatriates in New Jersey and Florida.

The disarray that marred Sunday’s vote cast a cloud over what had already been a complex race among 36 presidential candidates. None of them managed to build wide support among a population that has become disenchanted with the country’s tumultuous governing system, which has cycled through nine presidents in the past decade.

Now the risk is that an election that was supposed to help Peruvians chart a new course could instead feed even deeper disillusionment, especially among an untold number of voters who will still wind up disenfranchised as a result of the chaos.

Financial markets have largely shrugged off Peruvian political turbulence in recent years, in part because stable economic management has helped the country grow faster and maintain lower inflation than its regional peers.

Before the release of the Ipsos quick count, investors appeared encouraged by the results. The cost of insuring Peru’s debt against default for the next five years dropped 5.3 basis points to 68.3 on Monday, the lowest since the end of February.

There were signs early Monday that authorities were continuing to struggle. At a polling station in the Lima district of San Juan de Miraflores that was supposed to open at 7 a.m., voters were shut out until 8:00 a.m., some chanting, “Open the door!”

By that time, the usual morning fog in Lima still blanketed the arid hillsides south of the city and the line of voters returning to where ballots hadn’t shown up the day before already wrapped halfway around the school.

The scene was similar to the one on Sunday, except this time residents of this densely populated area of bare-brick homes with corrugated metal roofs came better prepared. Some brought plastic stools from home so they could sit while waiting in line. One woman was killing time by knitting. Other voters arrived in their work uniforms, many visibly annoyed.

“This has been a mockery, a failure of management,” said construction worker Silvio Elgar Naola, 58. The delays on Sunday “no longer give us any confidence in the election. they make us think there was outright fraud,” he added.

Like Naola, many voters in line had to ask for time off work to return to the polls. “They’re not going to pay me for these hours,” he said.

Another voter, Dora Mendoza, worried that the woman whose house she cleans hadn’t replied to her message explaining she had to return to the polling station. “She might have gotten upset,” Mendoza said. And all for an election of questionable legitimacy, she added, one that inspires no hope: “I don’t trust anyone anymore, every politician who gets in just looks out for their family, for themselves.”

The official count of voters who missed the opportunity to cast ballots Sunday only includes those whose polling stations never opened. Many other sites began accepting votes hours after polls opened at 7 a.m., with some opening as late as mid-afternoon, according to authorities.

Voters at those sites, however, won’t have a second chance, raising questions about exactly how many will wind up disenfranchised by the disorganization.

Voting in Peru is compulsory, with fines for not participating. Electoral authorities said fines would be waived at the sites that reopened Monday, but not at the ones that opened late on Sunday.

The logistical nightmare has already generated cries of irregularities or even fraud from candidates like López Aliaga, who modeled his candidacy off of the brash politics of Donald Trump and called for the arrest of the head of Peru’s national election authority amid the chaos.

The problems, he alleged, surpassed those seen in Venezuela, where observers widely say ousted leader Nicolás Maduro stole a 2024 election.

The reopening of Lima polling sites may benefit candidates like López Aliaga, whose base is concentrated in the capital.

But the heated rhetoric signaled the likelihood that candidates who finish outside the top two will challenge the result, especially under new regulations that allow them to request recounts for the first time.

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(With assistance from Zijia Song and Philip Sanders.)

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