Scioli, Macri in tight race to first runoff in Argentine history.
Source: Buenos Aires Herald
According to provisional results released early on Monday Front for Victory candidate Daniel Scioli advanced to a tight lead with 36% over Mauricio Macri, of the "Let's Change" coalition, who obtained 35%. With 89% of the polling stations counted, Sergio Massa, from UNA front, ended in the third place with 21%.
Before any official data was unveiled, the candidates admitted a second-round scenario, which will take place on November 22.
The National Electoral Court (CNE) reported that over 79% of the electoral roll voted today, 5 points more than in the PASO primaries held in August and the highest turnout since 1999.
Six candidates competed today to become Argentines’ next president with 32 million people entitled to decide the successor of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who will be leaving office on December 10 after two consecutive terms in office.
*Daniel Scioli and Carlos Zannini of the populist incumbents, the Front for Victory (FpV);
*Mauricio Macri and Gabriela Michetti for the right-wing Let’s Change coalition;
*Sergio Massa and Gustavo Saénz for the centrist UNA alliance;
*Margarita Stolbizer and Miguel Angel Olaviaga for the Progressives;
*Nicolás Del Caño and Myriam Bregman for the leftist FIT front;
*and Adolfo Rodríguez Saá and Liliana Negre de Alonso for the centrist Federal Commitment.
To win outright in the first round, and avoid a runoff election, a candidate requires 45 % of valid votes - or 40% and a 10-point lead over their nearest rival. For the first time since 2003 voters were faced with a runoff, and were without a Kirchner on the presidential ballots when they entered the voting booth.
Read more: http://buenosairesherald.com/article/201672/scioli-macri-in-tight-race-to-first-runoff-in-argentine-history
Should Scioli win what now appears to be an inevitable runoff, voters will have returned Argentina's progressive Front for Victory (FpV) for a fourth successive term.
The FpV owed its strong showing for an incumbent party of 12 years on policies that recovered social security and other services privatized (and ruined) during the 1990s, and to real wages over 75% higher and real GDP that doubled. Staunch opposition, however, from Argentina's three major media groups (all of which had close ties to the fascist 1976 dictatorship) made a dent.
Excluding the landowner-dominated National Autonomist Party era from 1874 to 1916 (as those were not free elections), a victory next month would mark the first time that any one party wins four successive terms in Argentina.
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