The 2018 Lima municipal election was held on 7 October 2018 as part of the wider 2018 Peruvian regional and municipal elections. Voters in the Lima Province elected the Mayor of Metropolitan Lima and the 39 members of the Metropolitan Council (Concejo Metropolitano de Lima) for the 2019–2022 term. Jorge Muñoz Wells, the outgoing mayor of the Miraflores District and candidate of Popular Action (Acción Popular), was elected mayor with 36.03% of the valid vote, defeating a field of twenty candidates. He was proclaimed mayor-elect by the Special Electoral Jury of Lima Centre on 6 November 2018 and took office on 1 January 2019. The result marked the first time Popular Action had won the Lima mayoralty since Eduardo Orrego Villacorta in 1980.
Background Under Law No. 30305, a constitutional reform enacted in March 2015 that amended articles 191, 194 and 203 of the Constitution of Peru, regional governors and mayors were barred from seeking immediate re-election. The reform meant that incumbent mayor Luis Castañeda Lossio of National Solidarity, who had governed Lima since 2015 (and previously from 2003 to 2010), could not run for another consecutive term. His party instead nominated his son, Luis Castañeda Pardo, who was selected as the National Solidarity candidate at a provincial assembly held in Lurín.
The elder Castañeda's administration left office with an approval rating of around 34% amid criticism over stalled and questionable infrastructure projects, and his tenure was separately shadowed by corruption investigations linked to the Comunicore case and the broader Lava Jato scandal. That climate weighed heavily on his son's campaign, which finished ninth with 2.58% of the vote. Fifteen months after the election, in February 2020, a judge ordered 24 months of pre-trial detention for Luis Castañeda Lossio in a case connected to Odebrecht's financing of his 2014 mayoral campaign.
Candidates Twenty candidates registered to contest the mayoralty of Metropolitan Lima:
Campaign Public security and crime dominated the campaign. Two of the frontrunners, retired army general and former Interior Minister Daniel Urresti (Podemos Perú) and Renzo Reggiardo (Peru Secure Homeland), built their candidacies around anti-crime platforms. Urresti's campaign was shadowed for months by his prosecution over the 1988 killing of journalist Hugo Bustíos; he was formally acquitted only three days before the election. Reggiardo's campaign lost momentum in the final stretch after he declined to take part in the televised mayoral debate. Ricardo Belmont, mayor of Lima from 1990 to 1995, mounted a further bid for the office but bled support after adopting hardline rhetoric against Venezuelan immigrants.
Jorge Muñoz, mayor of the Miraflores District since 2010, entered the final weeks of the campaign polling around 2.5%, but surged among undecided voters attracted to his moderate, technocratic profile and administrative record in Miraflores, ultimately winning just over a third of the vote.
Results Candidate Party Votes % Jorge Muñoz Popular Action 1,907,693 36.03 Daniel Urresti Podemos Perú 1,042,481 19.69 Renzo Reggiardo Peru Secure Homeland 469,533 8.87 Alberto Beingolea Christian People's Party 236,320 4.46 Ricardo Belmont Libertarian Peru 205,716 3.89 Juan Carlos Zurek We Are Peru 190,194 3.59 Jaime Salinas Alliance for Progress 186,348 3.52 Diethell Columbus Popular Force 142,913 2.70 Luis Castañeda Pardo National Solidarity 136,657 2.58 Pablo Silva Rojas Agricultural People's Front of Peru 113,001 2.13 Esther Capuñay Quispe Union for Peru 107,972 2.04 Enrique Cornejo Direct Democracy 106,197 2.01 Humberto Lay National Restoration 104,707 1.98 Manuel Velarde Dellepiane Always United 98,322 1.86 Enrique Fernández Chacón Broad Front for Justice, Life and Liberty 81,373 1.54 Gustavo Guerra García Together for Peru 39,888 0.75 Julio Gagó Go on Country 39,564 0.75 Roberto Gómez Baca Let's Go Peru 35,251 0.67 Luis Enrique Ocrospoma Peru Nation 32,144 0.61 Jorge Villacorta Carranza Peruvians for Change 17,919 0.34 Total valid votes 5,294,193 100.00 Source: National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), as reported by El Comercio.
Metropolitan Council The 39 seats of the Metropolitan Council of Lima for the 2019–2022 term were distributed among the parties that cleared the electoral threshold, using the D'Hondt method:
image= Party Seats Popular Action 21 Podemos Perú 8 Peru Secure Homeland 4 Christian People's Party 1 We Are Peru 1 Peru Libertarian 1 Alliance for Progress 1 Popular Force 1 National Solidarity 1 Total 39
Aftermath Jorge Muñoz was sworn in as Mayor of Lima on 1 January 2019 for a term running through 2022. His election, together with Popular Action's 21-seat majority on the Metropolitan Council, was widely described in the Peruvian press as a revival of the party founded by Fernando Belaúnde Terry, which had not won the Lima mayoralty since Eduardo Orrego in 1980.
See also 2018 Peruvian regional and municipal elections List of mayors of Lima Metropolitan Municipality of Lima
References
External links National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) National Jury of Elections (JNE)