Argentina 2011: Election day Sunday 23th october (POST ELECTION)

[Edu]

Well, yesterday Cristina Kirchner announced what everybody knew already: That she's running for reelection. So it seemed appropriate with about 125 days till the election to start a thread about it and also to look at the other contests this years (some already happened).

So far, there are 7 official candidates for the presidential election that will happen on the 23rd of October.
The clear frontrunner is Cristina with most polls showing that she'll easily win in the first round. She won't hit the 50% mark but so far it looks pretty likely that there will be more than 10% of the votes separating her from the runner-up. The most interesting thing about it will certainly be the choice of Vicepresident which is still an enigma, i can think of a few candidates but I'll venture a guess later on. Cristina benefits from having a terribly divided opposition, though it's my belief that she would be favored if the election ends up in a runoff.


Former president Eduardo Duhalde who in a hilarious turn of events is considered the "de facto" right wing candidate, is also running. Duhalde is notable from being one of the few presidents in our history who was sworn in with crap approval ratings and ended up with some pretty decent ones, which is mostly thanks to the gradual recovery from the 2001 crisis that we experienced during his term. His worst political mistake was choosing Nestor Kirchner as his "puppet" back in 2003 thinking that he would keep the seat worm for a Duhalde comeback in 2007, funny remembering that that's exactly what everyone thought would happen
Anyway, his running mate is Mario Das Neves, the governor of Chubut since 2003 that ends his term this year. Das Neves is a former Kirchner ally who switched sides around the time the government lost the 2009 elections, he has great approval ratings in his province but he has been crippled by the recent gubernatorial election in Chubut where the candidate he supported barely beat the Kirchner candidate in a very controversial election.


Unless something bizarre happens the only candidate i can see reaching a second round is Duhalde (Despite what some recent polls say) but in this country one can never truly know what will happen.
Representing the Radical Civic Union (UCR) is Ricardo Alfonsin, son of the former president Raul Alfonsin. This guy is one of the most uncharismatic persons in politics i have ever seen, just looking at him depresses me. Like with most recent UCR candidates this guys fails at firing up a campaign and lately he's been all over the place, trying to make an alliance with the socialists and then making one with the right wing in the province of Buenos Aires. Frankly I have no idea what his positions on issues are, he just seems to rely on his name and his anti-Kirchner stance to get votes. Some polls show him in 2nd place but I'm guessing that number will drop when he actually starts campaigning and spreading clinical depression all over the country.
His running mate if former head of the central bank Javier Gonzalez Fraga, an economic liberal who strongly supported Menem during the 90's. I know that him trying to get the left wing votes would be dumb since those are pretty much divided between Cristina and the socialists, but his pandering to the right wing will cost him more votes than what he'll gain (I can see a lot of his supporters changing their votes for the socialists or even Cristina.


Hermes Binner is the official Socialist Party candidate and probably the guy I'll support. He is widely praised for his term as mayor of Rosario, Santa Fe between 1995 and 2003 and he has been the governor of the Santa Fe province since 2007 (the first socialist governor in our history) and he's noted for having high approval ratings there. he was ambivalent about jumping into the election but the candidate he backed in the Santa Fe primaries for governor did an excellent election and that finally convinced him to run.
His running mate is Norma Morandini, senator from Cordoba, a former journalist and a pretty respected figure.


Also running is perennial candidate for the presidency Elisa Carrio, who went from unknown in 2001, to pretty well known in 2003, to a serious presidential contender in 2007 and now is just plain batsh**t insane. She'll be lucky if she breaks 5% of the vote.


Alberto Rodriguez Saa is also in, he has been the governor of San Luis since 2003 (he's the brother of Adolfo Rodriguez Saa who was governor of San Luis from 1983 to 2001 when he became president in that infamous week where we had 5 different presidents). He isn't really a national candidate, he has a reputation in the media of having managed his province extremely well and he's insanely popular there, but his chances anywhere else in the country are slim. He'll probably win his province in the election though.


And then we have Jorge Altamira of what could be considered a communist party. Lol, good luck getting 1% of the vote, mate.


Yep, I know that it's not much information and my english might be confusing at times, but in the next few days I'll try to expand the information about other elections which will take place this year and I'll try to write a summary of the provincial elections that already happened.
Of course I'll try to update this regularly

[Edu]

Heh, I remember that after Nestor dies, some on this forum were like "Christina won't run. She don't have her own strenght". Right...

Yeah, it was pretty obvious that she was going to run, and the tactic of announcing late in the year was pretty good since for months the opposition has pretty much fought against themselves. It also neutralized some bad press the government was having for the past 2 weeks. The "escalation" between her and Cameron over the Falklands was most likely created to help neutralize the bad weeks a bit.

What happened with the mayor of Buenos Aires?  I thought I heard something a while back about him being a contender to run in this election.

He was. Mauricio Macri started testing the waters and because the national polls were pretty terrible he decided to run for Mayor again, which was probably a good decision since he is favored to win (though it will probably be a closer election than in 2007). I'm going to write about the Mayoral race in the city of Buenos Aires tomorrow.


By the way, according to one pollster Cristina's approval rating in May was 58% which is among the best she had since 2007. She was at 32% in May of last year.

[Edu]

Pino Solanas and Binner are still allied in the City of Buenos Aires, Santa Fe and
Cordoba, but yes, Nationally and in the Buenos Aires province it's basically a fact that they broke up.

[Edu]

While at the presidential level they were mostly wiped out (Moreau got a hilarious 2,34% of the vote while in 2007 they were MIA and the various factions supported Cristina, Carrió and Lavagna) at the state gubernatorial level they didn't do that badly in 2003 (winning 5 provinces) and in 2005 (they won both of the governorships up for election).

Despite losing big in 2001 they somewhat mantained their numbers in congress during 2003. It looked like it was going to dissapear when they didn't run a candidate in 2007 and lots of governors, deputies and senators were allied with Kirchner (Like current vicepresident Cobos). But thanks to Cobos becoming opposition while still in the VP job and decent results in 2009 they never really dissapeared.

I guess there will always be a spot for a Non-Peronist, Non-Socialist party. Especially considering that most of the "Right Wing" nowadays are also Peronists


EDIT: Plus a lot of the UCR people survived by making alliances with Carrió and the Socialists.

[Edu]

Well, so far we had 5 gubernatorial elections and a gubernatorial primary election in Santa Fe.

So far, the Front for Victory (FPV, Kirchner's party) has been doing quite well.

The first election of the year was in the northern province of Catamarca where Eduardo Brizuela del Moral (UCR) has been governing since 2003. Catamarca is one of the few provinces where the governor can be reelected indefinitely, so this guy was running for a third term.
Brizuela del Moral was until not so long ago a "Radical K", a breed of UCR politicians allied with Kirchner. There was a time where most of the UCR governors (if not all) that were in office were allied with Kirchner. In 2007 Brizuela del Moral in a coalition with the FPV pretty much destroyed opposition peronist Luis Barrionuevo (Who is one of the most corrupt people in politics, apart from being a gangster).

He was pretty loyal till the whole conflict with the farmers and the agricultural sector and then switched sides around the time Julio Cobos did.

His opponent in this election was Lucia Corpacci who was elected in 2007 as vicegovernor on the ticket of Brizuela del Moral and then resigned after the coalition broke up and she won a seat in the senate.
Basically every poll showed Brizuela del Moral winning a third term with a reduced percentage of the votes but he surprisingly lost.
Corpacci ended up winning 49,5% to 45,6%, winning the capital district of the province which represents about half of the overall voters. She was expected to do pretty well in the more rural areas but she was expected to lose the capital.

Because it was the first election of the year and because the FPV won a surprising victory, the government started the narrative that the FPV was at it best and that a Cristina reelection was inevitable.
Still, catamarca is a poor, small, socially conservative province which gave Cristina a 33% margin of victory in 2007 and i wouldn't be surprised if she hits 60% this year, so in practical terms the victory there wasn't that much important except for kickstarting in the media the aforementioned narrative that Kirchner and the FPV are invincible. It also helped convince some prominent figures that were considering running for president to...well...stop considering it and backing off

And if anyone thinks that this win was a "turn to the left" or something like that, they'll probably be disappointed since Corpacci has strong family ties with the infamous Saadi family which governed the province for decades like feudal lords.


I was going to continue with the elections in Chubut, but i have some work to do so I'll continue this later.

And I'm not sure how useful I'm being by writing all this, but if I'm just giving people here information they already know please tell me

[Edu]

Ok, I'm back.

On the 20th of March, the second provincial election of the year took place. It happened in Chubut, a province in the Patagonia Region just north of Santa Cruz and South of Rio Negro. This contest was much more important than the ones in Catamarca because it involved a presidential candidate withdrawing their bid for the presidency, a very close election that involved a recount, the government making accusations of fraud and the resulting complementary elections


While the candidate for the FPV lost, he did it very narrowly and against the chosen candidate of outgoing governor Mario das Neves who was very popular in his province. This election wasn't in anyone’s radar since it was widely expected that the opposition would retain the governorship easily and the closeness of it all was another good result for the FPV and it reinvigorated the talk about Kirchner inevitability.

Mario das Neves is a peronist who was a member of congress in the 90’s and who was appointed by Rodriguez Saa in 2001 as director general of customs where he gained fame thanks to his eccentric behaviour and the way he liked to announce how he was fighting corruption and smuggling.
He was elected in 2003 as governor of Chubut defeating the incumbent UCR governor and putting an end to 12 years of continuous UCR control of the province. He became a close ally of Nestor Kirchner and the FPV and thanks to the government support and his popularity he managed to get reelected in 2007 with a whopping 76,7% of the vote.
Like a lot of “loyal” allies he broke up with Kirchner in 2008, campaigned against the FPV in 2009 and as far as I can remember he was the first official candidate for the 2011 elections, I remember seeing posters of him way back in early 2009

So yeah, the guy was popular and he had a national projection, so it's no wonder people were shocked by the results of the provincial election.

Das Neves candidate was Martin Buzzi and the FPV candidate was Carlos Eliceche. Election day was marked by a very close result but with Buzzi winning by about 1500 votes and because of perceived irregularities, the FPV claim there was fraud (the UCR candidate also complained about irregularities), there was a recount and the difference shrunk to about 400-500 votes in favour of Buzzi and after a heated legal battle 6 polling places results were annulled because of irregularities comprising of about 2000 votes. Complementary elections were called for, just for those 2000 or so people to vote again. The election took place and Buzzi was still declared winner with really no changes from the original results
The final official results had Buzzi beating Eliceche 36,7% to 36,6% by a difference of 385 votes.

This resulted in Mario das Neves withdrawing his bid for president and the opposition suffering another panic attack. While the opposition retained the province, the fact is that Buzzi will have to govern with a minority in the state legislature with the FPV gaining the majority. The FPV did also very well in the mayoral elections of the province.
The FPV candidate defeated the opposition candidate in Commodoro Rivadavia, the biggest city in the province (also before running for governor, Buzzi was mayor of that city so the defeat of a candidate he supported was a bit humiliating). Das Neves candidates also managed to win Trelew by a decent margin and Puerto Madryn by about 100 votes. The incumbent opposition candidate also surprisingly lost in Rawson, the capital of the province and in Esquel (a big tourist city) where the incumbent mayor since 1999 who is allied with the FPV easily won.
State legislature and some of the most important mayors opposed to him…ok, don't be surprised if in a few months opposition governor Martin Buzzi becomes a loyal Kirchnerist.
Oh, and the UCR got about 12% of the vote if anyone cares

The next 3 elections were in Salta, La Rioja and Neuquen but were pretty uneventful, I'll get to them later.

Oh, this is definitely helping me understand Argentine politics way better than say, wikipedia. So thanks.

Glad you enjoy it:) It's not much, but i try

[Edu]

What exactly are the right wing parties in Argentina because besides the PRO all of the major ones according to wikipedia are either center or center-left?

Yeah, good luck finding a national organized right wing party around here
Nowadays the PRO is probably the most important one though their base is the City and the province of Buenos Aires. They also have a strong contender for governor in Santa Fe, but apart from that they are pretty weak nationally.
In the past few years you could also find a party Called RECREAR headed by Ricardo Lopez Murphy which was fairly strong between 2002 and 2005, but has since fallen to an abyss.

In reality since the return of democracy in 83 the main right wing elements in politics came from the Peronist party and the UCR. Peronist Carlos Menem from 1989 to 1999 and then Radical Fernando De la Rua from 1999 to 2001. In the past couple of decades there have been some small parties that championed economic neoliberalism while being socially moderate, like for instance the UCeDe of Alvaro Alsogaray in the 80's and early 90's or Accion por la Republica, a party formed by former economics minister Domingo Cavallo in the late 90's. Both are now basically defunct though.

If you want to support the right wing you should probably look at each individual provincial contest and see wether the PRO or the opposition peronists are running candidates or not. Nationally your best bet is probably either Duhalde (who sort of represents the right wing faction of Peronism right now) or maybe even Alfonsin of the UCR who has made an alliance at least in the Buenos Aires province with the right wing.
Of course if you look at the north of the country for instance, almost every politician there has to be at least somewhat socially conservative, so you can't really miss there

What platypeanArchcow said is also true. In national politics is pretty hard to classify anyone in ideologies since most politicians zigzag all over the place depending on the national mood. When the country was perceived to be doing great in the mid 90's with Menem everyone was right wing, when the economy started to collapse in the late 90's early 00's the opposition started moving to the left. During Nestor Kirchner term in the mid 00's everyone was left wing and now that the economy and the political situation is not perceived to be that well there is starting to form some right wing opposition.
If the right wing wins and the economy improves then i can predict most politicians will be conservatives in the near future

Anyway there are things that probably are not going to change no matter who is in charge, especially some social issues like gay marriage. Since the legalisation of gay marriage last year the issue was completely dropped and there has not been a peep not even from the catholic church for the past year and of course no candidate that i know of is actually campaigning on banning it again or something like that. I believe that on social issues this country has moved to the left and will probably stay there for quite some time. Economically, well, as i said it depends on the national mood.

Duhalde for instance was in the late 90's a strong critic of Menem and his neoliberal economy and when he became president in 2002, he could be considered a left winger. In recent years thanks to his opposition to Kirchner, he has been turning to the right. How will he govern if he gets elected? well, your guess is as good as mine, really

[Edu]

In other news, Cristina will announce tomorrow her VP candidate which has been one of the most important and debated issues of the past year or so since the person she'll pick will be heavily favored to be the actual vicepresident for the next 4 years.

Last year some were thinking about who would help her to get more votes in the election, but as time went by and her numbers improved she doesn't really need someone like that anymore and so she can concentrate on picking someone that supports her so strongly that there's little chance he/she will turn into another Julio Cobos.

There has been an insane amount of speculation in the past few months, from union kingping Hugo Moyano to Nestor Kirchner's sister Alicia, people from other parties, conservatives, leftists, well basically everyone that had a bit of exposure was being considered a contender
Most recently, current governor of Chaco Jorge Capitanich was the frontrunner but he announced yesterday that he wasn't the one.

Right now there are 3 main candidates.

One is the current (and recently reelected) governor of the province of Salta in the far up north of the country. Juan Manuel Urtubey is a pretty popular conservative governor who has been allied with the FPV in the 2007 election and althought he claims he is not a Kirchner stooge he looks pretty loyal despite everything. He's not very well known nationally and since Cristina will landslide in the north he wouldn't gain her a lot of votes. There is also some concern that he might not be 100% behind the president if there is economic or political trouble. He's probably the least likely of the 3 main contenders to get the nod. There are some rumors that party people have been pressuring Cristina to pick a governor, so he's not out of this yet.




Another strong candidate is the current director of Communications Juan Manuel Abal Medina. The Abal Medina family has strong, ancient connections with the Peronist movement and his uncle was one of the main organizers of the far left guerrilla (or terrorist group, whatever you want to call it) "Montoneros". He is considered to be a close ally of the president and a pretty capable guy. He is deep inside the administration, would probably never betray Cristina and nobody has much of a strong opinion about the guy, so there won't be intra-party fights or stuff like that. However, people who actually knew who he was before this year can probably be counted with one hand




Finally we have who many consider to be the frontrunner. Current Economy minister Amado Boudou. He's a pretty charismatic guy and a fierce defender of the president. He is widely known throughout the country and because a lot of people feel the economy is doing pretty well, he could be considered a popular guy. He has been in the news quite a lot recently, especially recently when there was some speculation that he might run for Mayor of Buenos Aires.




As you can see, all of them are fairly young males, so there is not much variety

Of course, Cristina can always surprise everyone since the discussion and decision has been a well kept secret.

[Edu]

It's official.

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner - Amado Boudou

[Edu]

2 elections are taking place today. One in Misiones and the other one in Tierra del Fuego.

In Misiones incumbent governor Maurice Closs is going to be easily reelected and while he's not running under the FPV banner (another guy is doing that) he is strongly endorsed by the Pink House.

In Tierra del Fuego, Fabiana Rios, elected as governor in 2007 under the ARI banner (Carrio's party) is running for reelection and there is a close race going on against FPV Rosana Bertone, but it doesn't matter since she and her closest competitor are both supported by Cristina, so the goverment can't lose
There will most likely be a runoff between these two women.

[Edu]

Boudou was the director of the ANSES (Social security, unemployment subsidies and other stuff like that) for about 1 year (he had worked there for a while before though) and since July 2009 he has been Argentina's Economic minister. Alongside current mayor of Tigre, Sergio Massa (Also former cabinet chief in Cristina's administration, now in opposition). These 2 guys were credited for most of the work done there which is pretty well regarded even by some members of the opposition.

Last decade he was apparently pretty right wing economically even being a part of the party of Alvaro Alsogaray. Which probably makes me think that he's not a peronist but has to keep up appearances

From his appointment as Economy minister till Nestor Kirchner's death he wasn't all that powerful since he had a lot of clashes with Nestor and had little say about economic matters (which is hilarious considering he is...well...the economic minister ). His lack of media appereances during the time also reflects this. He was pretty close to Cristina though and when Nestor died Boudou took a more active role in things.

And well, i don't really know what Else to say, this guy started to get little mentions in the media since about 2006, he was starting to get known while economic minister in 2009 but he only came to national prominence in 2010, so there's not much else i can tell you about him I'm afraid.

Oh, here's his girlfriend Agustina Kampfer, if you like this kind of gossip




Redcommander is right though. He was probably the best candidate Cristina could pick. He's young and pretty charismatic. He's pretty popular with the youth in general (Young people are becoming one of Kirchner's main assets). He's not deeply tied with Peronism which could be a plus in the City of Buenos Aires and in some sectors in the Province. And while the economy is not booming as it was some years ago, as i said before, a lot of people feel the country is going in the right direction and that the economy is healthy and like it or not he's the visible face of all this right now.
Urtubey was too conservative and Abal Medina had a name that would have turned a lot of people off. Having Alicia Kirchner would have been considered too much nepotism even in this country and all the other candidates were deep into the peronist movement which would probably alienate Cristina non peronist allies and supporters.
Boudou is a guy that can get her some more votes and as i see it the only real way he would be a drag on the ticket is if the economy completely tanks between here and October which is not that likely and really, in that case not even Jesus Christ himself on the ticket would save Cristina.


This weekend I'll try to make a summary of the Mayoral election in Buenos Aires which is shaping up to be one of the most interesting elections of the year.

Oh and by the way, remember that i said last week that Martin Buzzi, the opposition candidate that won in Chubut was probably going to become a loyal Kirchnerist in a few months? Well, 2 days ago he officially announced that he was going to vote for Cristina and that we should support her. LOL, he didn't waste any time, did he?


And speaking about Flip Flops, remember that guy? Carlos Menem? President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999? A huge enemy of the left because of his neoliberal policies, the guy that had problems with Nestor Kirchner dating back from the mid 90's, the guy Nestor couldn't name without knocking on wood, one of the most reviled men in politics for the past 10 years?
Well, he's running for reelection as senator from La Rioja with Kirchnerist support and he recently said that Cristina was a great president.
That's a pretty awesome flip, from both sides

[Edu]

Menem is doing same game that Collor and Sarney in Brazil. They give support to government and they got government support and popularity in return in their poor provinces.

Why aren't Menem and Collor in prison right now? Weren't there notorious corruption charges against both?

Hahahahaha...This is South America mate

I don't know the specifics about Collor, but in Menem's case, despite multiple charges since he left office he has never been actually convicted.

Sometime during Nestor Kirchner's presidency there were some rumors that new charges were going to be brought against Menem, but the guy won a seat in the senate and so he received parliamentary immunity. Of course he's now pretty cozy with the government and he's 81, so i suppose prision is out of the question

[Edu]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/07/07/uk-argentina-election-poll-idUKTRE7660BC20110707

It seems Alfonsin is getting a boost in the polls and is now at about 23%. Plus what's up with his alliance with de Narvaez? Is he the PRO's candidate of choice?

Yep, the general feeling right now is that Alfonsín is the candidate that will finish 2nd. I thought he was going to tank but apparently a big chunk of the opposition is tired with so many peronists and the right wing voters apparently prefer him over Duhalde.
Binner's campaign has been pretty bad so far, people hardly knew him a few weeks ago and now...they still don't know him. I think he's going to improve a little on his polls but i haven't seen him do anything of note in the past 2 weeks.
Duhalde has also been pretty lame and is rapidly fading into obscurity.


As for the Alfonsín-De Narvaez-PRO thing, well it's a bit complicated. First off, you don't have to get confused thinking that Francisco de Narvaez is a member of the PRO, because he isn't. He is (or was) part of the "federal peronism" which are the right wing peronists and was just in an alliance with Macri 2 years ago called "Union PRO" but since then they have splitted.
De Narvaez did make an alliance with Alfonsín who supports him for governor of the province of Buenos Aires, but until a few days ago the PRO was going to field their own candidate for governor. Jorge Macri (Mauricio's cousin and current vicepresident of the lower house in the provincial parliament) was going to run but didn't, probably because of 2 factors. the first one is that he was obviously going to lose epically and the people on the right complained that he was just going to take votes away from De narvaez who has more of a shot. Also, PRO negotiations with Alfonsin, Alberto Rodriguez Saa and Duhalde to form an alliance with one of them failed miserably. So for now the PRO in the province isn't going to field candidates for congress or for the governorship and won't be endorsing or allying with anyone.

Jorge Macri is going to run for mayor of Vicente Lopez though (one of the most affluent districts in the province).

[Edu]

That's interesting, so does the UCR have a good chance of making a lot of ground in Buenos Aires since the PRO has traditionally been strong there?

The PRO alone in the province of Buenos Aires isn't really strong there, they only did well in 2009 because they were allied with other peronists. One of the reasons the PRO isn't fielding official candidates in the major elections there is because they would fail miserably.
Of course I think it's a given that those voters who would have voted PRO will strongly go for de Narvaez and i suppose that if Alfonsin continues to make even a slight ground in presidential polls they will support him too.
People who vote for de narvaez in the gubernatorial election (I'm not talking about those PRO voters i mentioned up there but about the people supporting de Narvaez from the start) aren't such a lock to vote for Alfonsin. Remember that a lot of those are peronist votes and they might favor Duhalde or Rodriguez Saa in a presidential election over Alfonsin.

Cristina will win Buenos Aires, but considering that the province has the largest numbers of voters in the country by far, it's terribly important for the other candidates to do well there and yes, Alfonsín might benefit.

We'll see, it's still a long way to go

Oh and it will sound dumb but just in case, to avoid confusion, i guess i should say that the City of Buenos Aires is an autonomous city, similar to Washington DC except that it gets to elect senators and deputies. It's not part of the Buenos Aires province (the capital of the province is the city of La Plata).
I'm saying this just in case people erroneously think that the people who'll vote tomorrow in the mayoral election would have a say in the gubernatorial election in October


By the way, i voted a few months ago in the botched "Federal Peronism" primary between Duhalde and Rodriguez Saa (Duhalde won narrowly in the City of Buenos Aires, but because of petty internal fights they cancelled the primaries and both Duhalde and Rodriguez Saa are running for president).
I will also vote tomorrow and there's basically a 99%chance there will be a runoff. Also I'll have to vote in the "primaries" on the 14th of August (this is something new and it's both hilarious and stupid, I'll probably talk about it later ). Then I'll vote in the presidential election in October and if there is a runoff I'll have to vote again.

So potentially this year I could be going to the polls 6 times in 6 different days in the same year.
This has to be some kind of record I guess

[Edu]

In other news, yesterday we had our last poll for the Mayoral election in the city of Buenos Aires.

Mauricio Macri (PRO) 45,3% - Daniel Filmus (FPV) 30,5% - Fernando "Pino" Solanas (Proyecto Sur) 11% - Maria Estenssoro (Coalición Civica) 3,2% - Jorge Telerman (FPBA) 2,6%

Then there are a whole bunch of others who fill the conviniently named category of "others"

This means we are looking at a runoff (no surprise there)

Looking at the trend one can see that Macri has been improving these past 2 weeks going from 40,8% in mid-june to 45,3%.
Filmus Made a jump from 23,2% in mid-june to 30,2% on the 1st of july which also coincided with a drop of Pino Solanas. and he has been pretty stable this past week.
Pino Solanas never really took off aparently, he was just 10% away from reaching second place in mid june but now he's pretty far away from that position.
Estenssoro and Telerman have been stable in their low numbers, the question for them would be if they can manage to get at least one of their guys elected to the city legislature.

There's other interesting data from the poll.

Macri is currently winning every age group, doing exceptionally well with the guys over 50 but in a close contest among the 18-29 group.
18-29: Macri 38% - Filmus 35% - Solanas 11%
30-49: Macri 38% - Filmus 27% - Solanas 13%
50 and over: Macri 50% - Filmus 25% - Solanas 8%

Among geographic areas Macri wins every one but does better in the north of the city which is also the most affluent. Filmus does better in the poorer areas and Solanas in the traditionally middle class areas.
North: Macri 51% - Filmus 22% - Solanas 10%
South: Macri 42% - Filmus 32% - Solanas 10%
Centre: Macri 40% - Filmus 33% - Solanas 9%
West: Macri 37% - Filmus 26% - Solanas 14%

We also have information of votes by gender
Men: Macri 37% - Filmus 31% - Solanas 13%
Women: Macri 48% - Filmus 26% - Solanas 8%

So, according to the recent polls this election is going to be pretty similar to the 2007 election with Macri mantaining his support.

[Edu]

I just finished voting for Pino Solanas, hoping that he reaches the runoff (not likely).
Took me 5 minutes to walk to the place, 5 minutes of waiting in a line, 1 minute to cast the ballot and 5 minutes walking back home. Great!


This year we are voting for "comuneros" (7 people per commune) for the first time. There are 15 communes that were created some time ago. Some communes like the 14th (the one I'm voting in) is entirely made up by the neighbourhood of Palermo. Other communes are formed by 2 or more neighbourhoods, like the 4th that includes La Boca, Pompeya, Barracas and Parque Patricios.

As I said we'll elect 7 people to serve in each commune and it is a decentralization move that has been awaited for quite some time. The central government of the city of Buenos Aires will give the 15 communes about 1.2 billion Pesos in total (about 5% of the city's budget).

The function of the Comuneros will be to fix specific and local problems in each of the neighbourhoods like the bad state of some roads, garbage problems, cleaning and reviving green spaces, etc. This may sound like little crap but the fact are that if someone wants to fix a road in front of his house he has to call the central city government and it could take ages to fix it (if it's even fixed at all. Also thanks to the government ineffectiveness, a lot of parks are deteriorating rapidly.
The idea behind this is to give more power to the people, so to speak. Hope they'll actually do that, I should be optimistic but this is Argentina after all

We should probably start having Exit Polls in about 3 or 3 and half hours, but apparently it is expected that official results will take more time than usual thanks to this new commune stuff. The expectation is that official results will start coming in about 6 hours.

[Edu]

First official results.

About 10% of the votes counted

Macri 45,3% - Filmus 30% - Solanas 13%


Now they have updated it and we have 23% of the votes counted

Macri 47,4% - Filmus 28,4% - Solanas 12%

Apparently Estenssoro (Carrio's candidate) is 4th with about 2% of the vote, followed by Giudici of the UCR with a bit less than that and then former Mayor Jorge Tellerman with about 1,5%


Ok, now they are showing 25% and Macri has 47,8%, i'm thinking there is a chance this couls be over in the first round.

[Edu]

I still have no idea from where the votes are coming.
If they are coming mostly from the north then Macri's numbers will go down and if they are mainly from the south or centre then Macri could win with more that 50%. Of course they could be coming from all over the city and this numbers could hold

The PRO will probably add legislators and so will the FPV. The Civic Coalition of Carrio is the big loser in the election if we compare it to 2009


EDIT: PRO is also winning every commune

[Edu]

Something just happened, since now we are back at 23% of the votes counted with Macri 45,4% and Filmus 29,7%

Probably someone in the network I'm watching, screwed up the numbers before.

[Edu]

I just found the link with the official results, it's updating rather quickly

http://www.eleccionescaba2011.gob.ar/paginas/paginas/dat01/DGO01999.htm

[Edu]

57% reporting

Macri 46,5% - Filmus 28,5% - Solanas 12,9%

In the Commune 14 (the one i live in ) it's Macri 54% - Filmus 22% with 14% reporting.

The closest commune appear to be the 8th with Macri 42% - Filmus 37% Which makes sense since it's probably the poorest and most peronist area in the city.

In Recoleta which is commune 2 and one of the most affluent places in the city it's Macri 58% - Filmus 18%

[Edu]

In terms of the legislature the Pro is getting 44% of the votes and the official FPV candidate (Juan Cabandié) got just 15% which is about half of what Filmus got. Which is a pretty hard blow against Cabandié since this means that about half of Filmus voters decided to vote for other candidates for the legislature.
It has to be said that most of those other votes went to other "Kirchnerist" lists like for instance the one of Anibal Ibarra (Former Mayor) who got 7% and will be in the legislature, but Cabandié was an important member of "La Campora" which is the youth wing of Kirchnerism and they are the most virulent ideologues in support of Kirchner, so this is sort of embarrasing for the guy.

[Edu]

85% reporting

Macri 46,7% - Filmus 28,2% - Solanas 12,9%

[Edu]

Do you know where there are official results for the city legislature and communes?

In terms of number of seats in the legislature and the communal councils, no.
I heard in the background some commentators saying that PRO probably gained 1 or 2 seats or in the worst case stayed even in the legislature. The FPV probably won 1 or 2 seats too. The biggest gain is apparently for the socialists (under Pino Solanas) who apparently gained 4 seats. But it's all unofficial.

[Edu]

Well, now I got some more info.

30 of the 60 seats in the local legislature were up for election.
Macri had 14 seats to defend and won 16 so that's a gain.
 
The FPV had to defend 4 and won 5. the FPP and Nuevo Encuentro both are soft kirchnerists and had Filmus as Mayor on their ballot but they made up their own lists for legislators (which means that the kirchnerists had 3 different lists of people). Both the FPP of former mayor Anibal Ibarra and the Nuevo Encuentro of Gabriela Cerrutti got 2 seats each. So all in all Kirchnerists got 9 seats. Though I repeat, 4 of them are soft Kirchnerists since they are composed of people who are close with the government but could deviate from some of the government's policies in the legislature.

Proyecto Sur of Pino Solanas had to defend 1 seat but won 4 in this election.

The Coalición Civica of Elisa Carrio had 2 seats up for election and won only one.

Things basically stay the same, with the PRO in the legislature having a minority but governing thanks to the support of other parties, though as far as I know they aren't formally in any official coalition, so this is why it's important that 4 of the kirchnerists candidates that won in this election are not under the official party line.

With more than 99% reporting the election for the legislature ended up like this.

PRO 45% - FPV 14% - Proyecto Sur 12,9% - FPP 6,6% - Nuevo Encuentro 6,5% - Coalición Civica 4% - UCR 2,1% and then a whole bunch of people nobody cares about.