Fernández de Kirchner Comes out on Top in Argentina's Primaries

If Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kichner looked like a formidable candidate before Sunday’s primary elections, she now looks almost unbeatable. With 96 percent of the votes counted, Fernández de Kirchner won 50.07 percent—well over the 45 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff in the October 23 presidential election. The incumbent trounced the opposition in the field of social media, receiving 76,548 mentions on Twitter Sunday, followed by Eduardo Duhalde with 21,835 and Juan Hermes Binner with 18,492. Perhaps the greatest testament to the president’s success is that she won in three electoral districts where her political allies fared poorly in recent regional elections: Santa Fe, Córdoba, and the Federal Capital of Buenos Aires. At the time, analysts interpreted those contests as an important barometer of Fernández de Kirchner’s support. Instead, Fernández de Kirchner won in every province except San Luis.

The victory in San Luis was a shining moment for Alberto Rodríguez Saá of the Alianza Compromiso Federal. “We’re the only ones to beat Cristina,” he said proudly at a press conference on Sunday. But Rodríguez’s Saá’s performance outside his home province was less impressive. He secured only 8.11 percent of the national votes, putting him in fifth place. The rest of the opposition did not do much better. The three opposition candidates who directly trailed Fernández de Kirchner—Ricardo Alfonsín, Eduardo Duhalde, and Juan Hermes Binner—raked in 12.19 percent, 12.18 percent, and 10.29 percent of the votes, respectively. The nearly even split among the opposition’s top candidates leave voters who oppose Fernández de Kirchner without any clear leader.

Fernández de Kirchner’s success owes largely to her at times controversial stewardship of the economy, which has delivered 5.6 percent growth since she took office in 2008. Her administration has also been credited with providing an expanding safety net for the country’s poor with the implementation of programs to deliver cash transfers to low-income families, on the condition that they keep their children enrolled in school. Such policies of redistribution supported by high commodity prices have allowed the government to subsidize energy and food costs for the public.

Opponents of the Fernández de Kirchner administration, however, counter that her policies are scaring away foreign investment. Businesses and investors took $9.8 billion out of Argentina during the first half of this year—a figure already closing in on the $11.4 billion investors pulled from Argentina throughout 2010, Bloomberg reports. Others criticize the Argentine president’s handling of inflation, which private firms say the government underestimates. Several private estimates, including that of former Central Bank President Alfonso Prat-Gay, put Argentine annual inflation at 25 percent, while the last report from the government statistics agency, INDEC, estimated the figure at 9.7 percent.

Sunday’s election was Argentina’s first national primary, instituted as part of a political reform passed in 2009. Unlike party primaries in the United States, ten presidential candidates faced one another in a national contest. Those securing more than 1.5 percent of the vote are eligible to run in October’s election. Despite the fact that in Argentina voting is obligatory, a large chunk of the population routinely stays home on election day. This year, 77.8 percent voted in the primary, marking the highest level of voter participation in a national election in Argentina’s history. “For me, at least, the most impressive figure that came out yesterday… is that we broke the record for electoral participation,” Fernández de Kirchner said at a press conference today, accompanied by her running mate, Economic Minister Amadou Boudou.

Learn more:

• AS/COA holds its annual Buenos Aires conference on August 31, with the economic and political outlook as this year’s topic.
• Access official election results.
• Get ongoing electoral coverage at the University of British Colombia’s Argentina Elections page.
• Watch Fernández de Kirchner discuss Sunday’s election in a press conference Monday.
• View the top five candidate’s Twitter accounts: @CFKArentina, @ricalfonsin, @HermesBinner, @eduardoaduhalde, @RodriguezSaa011.
• An AS/COA hemispheric update explores Argentina’s electoral landscape.
• Read an AS/COA Online News Analysis about Fernández de Kircher’s running mate Amadou Boudou.