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

[redcommander]

Thanks for the information Edu! Do you know who the candidates for governor in Cordoba are?

[Edu]

Thanks for the information Edu! Do you know who the candidates for governor in Cordoba are?

Córdoba is an unusual election, I'll talk about it tomorrow

For now I just found 3 presidential polls for August. First off, considering how crappy most pollsters have been this year you should be careful looking at the results. Secondly, we have open primaries on the 14th of August that I believe I haven't talked about yet (which are hilarious considering that every presidential candidate is already without opposition from their parties, I'll talk about this after the Córdoba election). The thing is that a lot of politicians and voters are waiting for these primaries that will gave as an accurate representation of how the real presidential election will go in October. I suspect a lot of people are waiting to see who ends up being the frontrunner and then go to him (or her), depending on the results some candidates might even drop out or not qualify for the election (yep, I'm going to explain how the primaries work next week, don't worry ).

The first poll Shows Cristina winning in the first round.
Cristina Kirchner 41,6% - Ricardo Alfonsin 20,4% - Eduardo Duhalde 8,2% - Hermes Binner 5,2% - Alberto Rodriguez Saa 4,8% - Elisa Carrio 3% - Others 5,5% - Undecided 11,3%

They also released some runoff scenarios and Cristina wins them all. 54% against Alfonsin, 57% against Duhalde, 56% against Binner and 58% against Carrio.

The Second Poll also shows Cristina Winning in the first round.
Cristina 40,4% - Alfonsin 15,9% - Duhalde 9,9% - Binner 6,3% - Carrio 5,5% - Rodriguez Saa 4,1% - Others 1% (probably didn't poll all of them) - Undecided 16,9%

According to this poll Cristina's approval ratings are 53% - 41% and hers favorability rating is 49,4% positive, 18,9% neutral and 29,7% negative.

The Third poll is the only one that would actually lead to a runoff.
Cristina 38,1% - Alfonsin 19,7% - Duhalde 13,1%
For some reason the percentages for the other candidates weren't released, they only say that Rodriguez Saa is 4th, Binner is 5th and Carrio is 6th. There are apparently 12% of undecideds.


But I repeat, one shouldn't pay much attention to these polls (most political figures aren't), things will start to get real after the August 14th Primaries.

[Edu]

Well, tomorrow we'll have the elections in the second largest province in the country.

Cordoba Together with Santa Fe and the City of Buenos Aires could be categorized as the most independent districts in the country in the sense that they don't really depend that much on the federal government and the parties voted can swing wildly unlike in some other provinces where peronism is the norm since the 40's.

Since the return of democracy in 1983, while Santa Fe has been leaning to left wing peronists or socialists, the province of Córdoba was long considered an UCR stronghold. Much of this was thanks to Eduardo Angeloz who was governor there from 1983 to 1995, later a senator and in 1989 presidential candidate who lost to Carlos Menem.
Córdoba stayed loyal to the UCR even when the national party under president Raúl Alfonsin was going up in flames in the late 80's. Not only Angeloz was reelected in 1987, that same year 17 provinces voted for the peronists in the deputies election and Cordoba was one of three provinces that voted for the radicals. In 1989 it was the only province where the UCR won the deputies election and in the presidential election of that year Angeloz won the province and 3 other districts.
In fact, from 1983 till 1995 the peronists never won an election in Córdoba. Well, they won a provincial legislature election in 1989, but nobody cares about those .
The UCR even did pretty well during the disastrous 2001 elections 2 month before the collapse of president De la Rua.

In recent years though, the peronists have grown a bit more strong, partly thanks to the 2001 crisis and to governor Jose Manuel de la Sota (1999-2007) who is currently a candidate.

I should also mention that this is, along with the City of Buenos Aires and San Luis the only districts that the Kirchner's never won in neither of their 2 presidential elections.

Also worth mentioning is the controversy that took place 4 years ago during the gubernatorial election. De la Sota picked his vicegovernor Juan Schiaretti as his successor. Schiaretti's opponent in the elections was Luis Juez (who is also running this year), none were officially Kirchnerists though both had good relations with the FPV. The vote was very close but it was reported at a very slow pace. For most of the time Juez was winning, but at one point during the night the electoral centre were the votes were being reported suddenly threw journalists out, looked like it was going to call it a day, but after a while it continued reporting but with Schiaretti narrowly on top and he ended up winning by a little more of 1%. It became a pretty big scandal and Juez was accusing Schiaretti, de la Sota and even the national government of fraud and the news about it got national. Juez asked the courts for a full recount, but because of lack of evidence only some 700 hundred polling places had to recount the ballots (this happened to be where the most blatant irregularities happened) and the recount did give Juez an increased number of votes but it was obviously not enough to win.
Juez still carries that grudge and while he was pretty cozy with Kirchner during the period 2003-2007 things sort of cooled down after that day and he has been considered to be in opposition since then.

Well, that was a little bit of backstory, now we go to the current election.


First of all, I said that this was a strange election, not only there is no official FPV candidate but all 3 of the main candidates for governor have had a love-hate relationship with the national government of Kirchner. All could be considered opposition right now, and at the same time all could be easily considered potential kirchnerists if they manage to win.
If you like Cristina you don't really know who will be most likely to flip to her side and for the same reason if you are opposed to Cristina you have the same predicament. It's not like there is a clear cut Kirchnerist candidate and an opposition one.
This is better exemplified by the fact that Cristina has said flattering stuff to all 3 candidates while not endorsing anyone, probably hoping that whoever wins flips over to her side if she wins the presidential election.
The candidate that wins the election will probably reamin in unofficial opposition until the october election. If Cristina wins they'll most likely flip, the question should be who is the most likely and the least likely to do that.

Now, this are the candidates.

JOSE MANUEL DE LA SOTA



He's the Peronist party candidate and I believe he's the most likely to ally himself with Cristina once elected. He's also a difficult man to pin on an ideology. he can be both right wing and left wing depending on the president and mood of the country.
His political career started way back in 1973 where he worked for the mayor of the city of Córdoba. Despite political divisions between peronists at the time, de la Sota remained and ended up working for the governor. All came to an end with the 1976 coup.
In 1983 he ran for Mayor of Córoba but lost to Radical Ramon Mestre. Despite that, he started going up in the party and his political history in this period is quite a long tale where Córdoba peronism was fractured between the "old guard" and the "renovation" led by de la Sota and others. Eventually during the late 80's despite the unpopularity of Raul Alfonsín the peronist party failed to make inroads in the province and de la Sota's faction "won" the internal war.

Of course when menem won in 1989 most peronists supported him and de la Sota was no exception, becoming ambassador to Brazil in 1990. He ran for governor in 1991 but failed to get elected. As his importance in the province grew, he started having shaky political relationships with Menem and the provincial party started splitting again. In the end he was appointed senator in 1995 and then he won the governorship in 1999 which was his lifelong dream. He unified peronism there and is credited with the victories the party made at the time. He became the provincial strongman there which is probably why he's not really afraid to have ambivalent relations with Duhalde, Menem, Kirchner and other peronists.
He was also considered by Duhalde in 2002 as a possible successor but after seeing the dwindling national poll numbers he refused. Eventually Duhalde convinced Nestor Kirchner to run and the rest is history.

He still has a lot of influence in the province and he has been leading in the polls for tomorrow's election.


Then we have senator LUIS JUEZ.



He's running as the Frente Cívico candidate and has the support of the Socialists and other left wing parties.
This guy is a bit nuts, not in the sense that he is incompetent but he's a bit...I don't know how to say it. Let's say he's loud and a bit of a clown.
Early in his career he was a peronist closely allied with de la Sota. Despite having cordial relations with president Menem he had a bit of a maverick streak and often criticized them when he felt they were going much too far to the right. He was a provincial legislator but he resigned because of ideological differences with the party and it's unconditional support to Menem. He run for Mayor of the City of Córdoba but lost in the primary against German Kammerath who was publicly endorsed by de la Sota. At this point the alliance with de la Sota started crumbling. He got a job in the administration of de la Sota as a sort of special prosecutor to fight corruption. Everyone probably thought that because they appointed him, he was going to ignore corruption, but in 2001 he started making accusations against de la Sota and a number of his associates and that's when the relationship broke and they became political enemies. He was fired and created a new party with support from other former peronists and some radicals, but the party was mostly made up of independents who never held elective office before.

Kammerath was a disaster as mayor of Córdoba and Juez saw the opportunity and ran for mayor. He won and served from 2003 to 2007. This was the time where Juez was most aligned with Kirchner. Juez praised Kirchner as a real peronist and supported him all along. This was obviously until the election of 2007 that I mentioned earlier.

After that, he made an alliance with the socialists and carrio's coalition and ran for the senate in 2009, where he won the election with 30% of the vote against the UCR that got 27%.

He is well know as a politician for his honesty but he is also pretty controversial, not afraid calling other politicians idiots in their faces or in live television, he sometimes dresses like a clown (not a literal clown, though that would be hilarious) and he even named his dog Jose Manuel in "honor" of his opponent. His interviews are usually quite funny because you feel that he doesn't give a crap about anything . A lot of people consider him a joke though.

Apparently he is 2nd in the polls and while most opposition candidates all around the country blast their opponents and the National Kirchner government equally (sometimes they blast Kirchner even more). Here, Juez does have some insults aimed at the government but most are directed at de la Sota.


Finally we have our last important candidate. OSCAR AGUAD



He's the official UCR candidate. I don't know much about the guy, except that he was pretty close to Ramon Mestre, who was governor for Córdoba between 1995 and 1999 who had a very controversial term of office. While minister in Córdoba, Aguad was accused of critizising peronism while committing the same sort of clientelism. He was for years a more "behind the scenes" kind of guy. He was elected national legislator in 2005 and has been there till today. That's basically all I know. I could write what he puts in his biography section of his website but that one seems a little biased .

Despite being a staunch opponent of Cristina and the government he has moderated his criticism recently.



Obviously the guy most likely to get elected and instantly turn into a Cristina supporter is de la Sota who has time and time again done whatever he thought was best for himself regardless of political ideology.
Juez has a lot of points in common with Kirchnerism and though he blasts the government every time he can, people close to Cristina think that if he wins and Cristina is reelected he'll fall in line because of a lack of an alternative.
Aguad is probably the guy least likely to make a pact with the government but he seems kind of sleazy so no one is really sure about that.

[Edu]

As I said before Córdoba never voted for either Kirchner. Menem won there in 2003 (Kirchner ended up a hilarious 5th) and then Roberto lavagna won in 2007 (Cristina ended up losing by 12 points).
The polls all looked pretty close and while de la Sota is the favorite, this looks like a close election that will surely be entertaining. People and the media will surely talk about this election as a defeat for the president no matter who wins, but they'll do so especially if either Juez or Aguad win. And it will be especially fun if we have the same controversy as 4 years ago

The real reason this election matters more now than 4 years ago is that our very own national "Mock Election" will happen 8 days from now and every opposition presidential candidate is hoping to get something out of Córdoba to consolidate themselves as the "real" opposition to Kirchner.

De la Sota is endorsed by Eduardo Duhalde, though because it is perceived that the guy is the most likely to ally with Cristina and because kirchnerists have been pretty friendly to him I don't think it's goin gto help Duhalde much.

On the other hand Juez is supported by Socialist Hermes Binner and Oscar Aguad is supported by Alfonsin (obviously) and Rodriguez Saa (WTF?).

It will be interesting if any of the last 2 wins this.


Sorry for the long post

[Peeperkorn]

I can't understand how De la Sota is even competitive in this election. I like Juez's sense of humor.

[redcommander]

I'm hoping the second option wins. CFK's governing style has been very autocratic recently, and the opposition needs all the boost it can get to defeat her.

[Edu]

Well, we should start getting results in a couple of hours. Apparently the reporting will be a bit slow.

[Edu]

Apparently there is a polling station in the town of La Falda that has used electronic voting in this election so I guess that when they start reporting the results, the only place that will be fully counted is that 15000 people town.

The town is located in the department of Punilla which has been historically an UCR stronghold. It voted for lavagna with 36% against Cristina who got 20% in 2007. Carrio's ARI and the UCR basically got 25% each while the FPV got just 12% in the legislature elections of that same year.

In the election for senators in 2009, Juez got 34% against 27% of the UCR. The peronism that responded directly to de la Sota got 24% and the FPV got 9%

So when we get full results for that we could probably guess how the election is going


The Capital city is currently a nice district for former mayor Juez and the UCR should come in 2nd. the departments around the capital will be more contested with perhaps a stronger performance by the UCR.
The west of the province will be heavily peronist. The south and east will be fought and it will be vital what happens in the largest city of the region which is Rio Cuarto.

Just for kicks here is a map



The red square is Córdoba, the capital city. The Blue part is where de la Sota should do better. The yellow part is what has been historically UCR territory, but recently Juez and the Frente Civico got stronger. It should probably be the worst for de la Sota.
The black department is Rio Cuarto which should be close but probably de la Sota will win.


There is also some sort of happy climate from de la Sota's headquarters which probably means they saw some exit polls that favored them.

[Edu]

Lol, I'll never get used to the accent of the people of Córdoba.

[Edu]

Results from La Falda.
Aguad (UCR) 38% - De la Sota (PJ) 34% - Juez (FC) 18%

De la Sota is doing a bit better than expected. As correctly predicted the UCR won in that town. In the department, this isn't the strongest town for Juez so his 18% is not that worrying. 

[Edu]

Well, here are the first official results, though I have no idea fro which departments they are coming.

1,90% reporting

Jose Manuel De la Sota 48,8% - Oscar Aguad 24,7% - Luis Juez 22,5%

Obviously for all we know this is from De la Sota departments and 0% from the capital, but who knows right now.

If this stands then it's a huge victory for De la Sota and a boost for Cristina and Duhalde, but I'm thinking the election will get a closer.

[Edu]

Ok, in the last election in the city of Buenos Aires, 1 hour after the 1st results appeared we already had more than 90% reporting.

Here after half an hour we got 2,80% reporting

It's pretty boring right now, i'll probably come back later to update once we have 10% or something.

[Edu]

Juez and Aguad conceded defeat and De la Sota is currently giving his victory speech.

Juez has been gaining and De la Sota shrinking in the reporting, so this will probably end up closer to a 10 point margin victory instead of a 25% margin (or a 20% margin, which is currently the case)

Alfonsín and Binner were with the candidates when they conceded.

On other news, according to pollsters about 50% of the national electorate doesn't know who the hell Hermes Binner is, which explains his low poll numbers.


Nice speech by De la Sota, though he's still a douchebag

[Edu]

11,4% reporting

De la Sota 46,02% - Juez 25,63% - Aguad 23,99%

I guess this might end up 40% - 30% - 26%.

Yep, the count has been VERY slow and I'm not going to stay up 7 more hours to watch this

I'll try to do maps tomorrow.

[ag]

21.7% reporting

de la Sota 44.6%
Juez 27.4%
Aguad 23.4%

both Juez and Aguad have conceded

[Edu]

97% reporting

Jose Manuel De la Sota (PJ) 42,60% - Luis Juez (FC) 29,48% - Oscar Aguad (UCR) 22,96%

Well, my guess when it was 11% reporting was pretty close

Pretty impressive performance for De la Sota, it clearly shows who the provincial strongman is. The media is already touting him as a presidential contender in 2015, something which is obviously an overreaction since the last time this guy hinted he was going to run for president his poll numbers were hideous. I think he'll be pretty content to govern the province for 4 or 8 more years.

De la Sota won Rio Cuarto by a huge margin and only ended up 4 points behind Juez in the capital city. This is what really made the difference from what happened 4 years ago.

His victory speech was pretty concialiatory, but he was ambiguous and basically praised Córdoba and federalism. Government media says that the speech praised Cristina, opposition media says it blasted Cristina and neutral media is just saying it was a good speech


And the trend of incumbent parties winning continues.
Out of the 10 provinces that had gubernatorial elections so far, in 9 of them the party that was in power got reelected. The only exception was catamarca (the first election of the year) were the FPV of Cristina beat the incumbent governor.

A lot of people hate Cristina and others think that she is too authoritarian or whatever, but the fact is that most people are generally content with how the country is doing and the wave of incumbents winning reelection continues.

I'll do the maps later.

[Edu]

Well, here are the Córdoba maps, not terribly interesting but whatever...

First here is the population map. The Black square is the capital which has over 1.000.000 people.




Now here is the map for the gubernatorial election and it's pretty...dull.

De la Sota is in blue and Juez is in Red



Yeah, Juez came close in the department of Colon which is directly north of the capital and came reasonably close in the department of Punilla which is to the west of the capital. De la Sota's worst performances were pretty much a given to be located there, but he did better than expected.
De la Sota won over 60% in one department, Minas, which is also the poorest one in the province. His best department was Minas where he got 62,2% and his worst was the capital with 33,6%

I was going to make a map only of De la Sota support but it would be exactly like the one above except that the capital would be light blue
So here is the Juez map instead.



Underperformed in almost every department getting over 30% in just 3, and got a hilarious 17% in Rio Cuarto, the 2nd largest department. His best was in the capital where he got 37,8% and the worst was Rio Primero with 14%.

Here we have the map for Aguad.



Basically came in 3rd in most departments, thought he came in 2nd in Rio Cuarto. He did relatively well in the region where the UCR was historically strongest getting more than 30% in 2 departments there. Best department was Rio Primero with 37,3% and the worst was Minas with 9,9%.



Just for kicks, here is the map of the 2007 election were the main contenders were Juan Schiaretti (PJ), Luis Juez (FC) and Mario Negri (UCR).

Results of that time were:
Schiaretti 37,17% - Juez 36,04% - Negri 22,17%



It doesn't appear to be much difference but the guy did better in 2007 in all the places that mattered, specifically the capital and it's surroundings.

Capital department
2007
Juez 49,8% - Schiaretti 25,5%
2010
Juez 37,8% - De la Sota 33,6%

Rio Cuarto department
2007
Schiaretti 50,5% - Juez 25,1%
2010
De la Sota 55% - Juez 17,1%

Colon department
2007
Juez 45,2% - Schiaretti 31%
2010
De la Sota 39,3% - Juez 36,5%

San Justo department
2007
Schiaretti 44,5% - Juez 23,7%
2010
De la Sota 51,5% - Juez 21,9%

Punilla department
2007
Juez 38,9% - Schiaretti 34,8%
2010
De la Sota 39,3% - Juez 31,5%


Worth noting that De la Sota since winning in 1998 did very well in each gubernatorial election he took part in.

1998
49,59% against 40,47% of the UCR winning the capital by more than 50% and winning every department except 3.

2003
51,84% against 37,23% of the UCR (Aguad was the candidate) only he won the capital by less than 50% but won every department except 1.

[Edu]

Ok, first of all, sorry about the gimmick in the title, but I thought that what will happen on Sunday however ridiculous it may be is pretty much more important than the usual gubernatorial elections we've been having, and I'm not sure if anyone abroad really knows what's happening on the weekend.
If Al thinks the title is too gimmicky for the subforum I'll gladly change it.



What we are going to have on Sunday August the 14th, you may call it in several ways. “Big national poll”, “Mock elections”, “faux elections”, “a big waste of taxpayer money” or simply “WTF is this?”.

The official name however is “Primarias abiertas, simultaneas y obligatorias” which means “Open, Simultaneous and mandatory primaries”. Yeah, that's right we are going to have officially recognized primaries for every party and for every political office remaining to be voted on. This includes presidential, gubernatorial, mayoral and Congressional elections.
Well, that's cool, you might say, after all primaries are a good thing, you get to choose the candidate you prefer from a rainbow of options within the parties. How can they f**k it up?

Oh, that's right…Not even one of the 10 presidential candidates has any opposition within their parties at all, they are all unopposed. The same thing goes for most governors and most of the lists running for congress. D’oh!.

Apparently we are so full of money to burn that a huge and expensive national “election” just for kicks is a great idea. Ok, I'm being too harsh, this is something that will happen every 4 years, so there is a chance that in 2015 we'll have actual primaries and then it will become a good law, but who wants to bet that in 4 years the people running for president will just make up their own parties or coalitions and then go unopposed like this time? Hope I'm wrong but I don't have too much faith in the politicians of this country.

The law states that you can vote for any party primary you like, but you can do it only once per elected office. This means that if the FPV had Cristina and some guy challenging her and then you go to the socialists and you had Binner being challenged by some other dude, if you then go and vote for Cristina you can't then vote for Binner because they are both running for president, you can only choose one of the parties. After voting for president you will have to vote for national deputies, and since this is another office you are choosing, then you are free to pick whatever party you want but following the same rules of just one party per office. So you could vote for Cristina for president and then vote for the socialist deputies list and then for the UCR in the senator election. Of course if you want you can vote for just one party for all the stuff up for election.

So, you can only vote for one party for president and every presidential candidate is running unopposed in their own parties. This sounds familiar? Yes, of course it does, it's the same as if this were a real presidential election. In essence this will be like a huge national poll and a preview of what will happen in October. Do you realize now why this is important? It has the potential to massively change the narrative of this election. If Cristina gets more than 45% of the vote in the primaries then that means that the opposition will be hugely demoralized and if she gets more than 50%, well, then we might as well cancel the October elections .

On the other hand if Cristina gets something like 37% and Duhalde, Binner or Alfonsín get 32% then we have a sh**tstorm on our hands since a runoff will be expected and I'm guessing some of the opposition parties might drop out and endorse whoever comes in 2nd just to defeat Cristina.
And if by some strange prank from destiny Alfonsín, Binner or Duhalde get 36% and Cristina gets 30% then all hell is going to break lose and I'm officially clueless as to what will happen.

Of course Cristina might get 41% and the 2nd guy might get 20% which will be anticlimatic since that's what the polls say now. In which case we are back at square one. But hey, there is potential for a radical change in the direction of the presidential election and for once we'll have an accurate poll of something this year

I know what you are thinking, since basically no one is putting anything at risk here and this is such a weird event for people living in this country then turnout will be way lower than in the presidential election so this isn't going to be truly representative of anything. Mate, haven't you been paying attention? I stated clearly at the beginning that this is a “Mandatory” election and more importantly, if you don't vote on Sunday you will not be able to vote on the general election in October so if there is a 60% turnout in 2 days then in October the maximun turnout will be…eh…60%.

Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention that there is a floor of votes you need to get in the primaries for you to be able to participate in the October elections. You need to get 1,5% of the votes cast in the primaries. So if we assume 100% turnout then those small parties need to get about 400.000 votes in the primaries, since it's 1,5% out of the people who vote in the election and not 1,5% of the entire eligible voters then if there is lower turnout then they'll obviously need less votes.
Now, this is ok in a parliamentary system, after all you wouldn't want a party that got 10 votes in an election to have a representative in parliament so you need to set some floor for a party to get representation, but I'm not sure this works that well in a presidential system.
The reason they did this is to filter those annoying parties (mostly Marxists) that get 0,5% of the vote if they are lucky, they say that it will force them to make alliances and actually become parties instead of scattered morons. I have my doubts about this, but it actually worked this year. Most communist parties (and I mean communist, not socialists like Pino Solanas or pragmatic socialists like the…well…socialist party of Binner) have allied themselves in what is now called the “Leftist front” (wow, how imaginative, these guys should write for Monty Python). Basically apart from denouncing capitalism the whole campaign of the Leftist Front has been “We need 400.000 votes or we are f**cked”

There are 10 presidential candidates currently running for president. Obviously Cristina is safe from this (Although it would be extremely hilarious if she didn't reach the 1,5% floor). Duhalde, Binner and Alfonsín are also safe bets to get a good percentage. Alberto Rodriguez Saa and Elisa Carrio are more borderline cases and the first ones that have a risk of being eliminated. In 2007 Rodriguez Saa won his province (San Luis) with 68% of the votes which represented at the time almost 150.000 votes which is basically half of what he'll probably need to achieve in the primaries so I guess he has a good chance of being safe. The same thing happens with Carrio but in this case she'll probably get most of the votes in the City of Buenos Aires.
I would bet that these 2 will qualify for October, but they should worry a bit.

Then we have the Leftist front where Jorge Altamira is running for president and the official candidate of Pino Solanas party which is Alcira Argumendo. Now these 2 should really worry, there is a chance that they'll qualify, but the odds are against them. Both the communists and Argumendo dropping will probably benefit Hermes Binner.

And finally we have Jose Bonacci and Sergio Pastore. I don't know who the hell they are, nobody knows who the hell they are and they will obviously not reach the 1,5% required, but good luck anyway guys.
Ok, I lie, thanks to the new electoral law every party has a right to get public financing and, no matter how small, to have at least some TV spots produced and Bonacci has been hitting the airwaves! Oh yeah! Except that he is some far right loon that no one cares about and his spots (sorry, I should say his spot, since he has only one) are crap.

What people have to vote will vary wildly from province to province. For instance here in the City of Buenos Aires people will only vote for president and national deputies which should be easy enough (Than you Lord). On the other hand in the province of Buenos Aires you'll have to vote for President, Governor, National deputies, National senators, Provincial legislators, mayors and councilmen in what should be a nice clusterf**k.


Despite the presidential primary being made up of unopposed candidates and most races in the country also looking like that, the reality is that some races will have primary challengers.
The highest profile one is probably the one for governor of Buenos Aires where former Nestor Kirchner vicepresident and current governor and Cristina Ally Daniel Scioli is facing a primary challenge form ultraKirchnerist mayor of José C. Paz, Mario Ishii. Scioli is expected to win but it's another slap in his face that kirchnerists are so used to giving him since 2003.
A lot of Mayors in what is called the “Conurbano” which is basically Buenos Aires metropolitan area will also face primary challengers from ultraKirchnerists despite themselves being “supporters” of Cristina.
I'll talk about these particular elections tomorrow.


So there are several things one needs to pay attention to on Sunday:

1 – Percentage of the votes Cristina Kirchner gets (remember that if she gets more than 45% then there is no runoff, if she gets between 40% and 45% then there will only be a runoff if she gets less than 10% more votes than her closest opponent and finally if she gets less than 40% there would be a runoff no matter what.)

2 – Who the hell ends up 2nd after Cristina. Important because a lot of people are undecided or just waiting to see who has the best shot at taking down Cristina, which means that whoever ends up 2nd will get a massive influx of new votes.

3 – Which presidential candidates gets disqualified for the general election.

4 – Results of the races where there is a primary opponent.

5 – See how accurate the pollsters were.


Ok, that's it for now, hope the post will not be subject of the "tl, dr" rule . I hope that, unlike during the gubernatorial elections, more posters comment about this, but I'm afraid most are not even aware about the primaries on Sunday

[MaxQue]

Well, I read, I read, but I have nothing to say.

[Edu]

Well, I read, I read, but I have nothing to say.

Well, that's fine too I suppose

[redcommander]

Well I will be sure to post something. Hopefully other people do too.

[Хahar 🤔]

It's a really interesting system, although I'm not sure that primaries make sense in any country save the United States, given the unique nature of the American party system. The mandatory nature makes it seem like a pointless gimmick.

[big bad fab]

That's really fascinating. Thanks for this long explanation, Edu.

I like this system: I mean, it's very interesting to study .
The problem, in RL, is the fact that you can't vote in October if you don't join the feast now: that's really a bias that is anti-democratic.
No constitutional court's rule on this ?

[Hash]

This seems like a huge waste of time. But fun.

[Edu]

It's a really interesting system, although I'm not sure that primaries make sense in any country save the United States, given the unique nature of the American party system. The mandatory nature makes it seem like a pointless gimmick.

There was a time not too long ago that some parties, especially the UCR had internal elections to select the candidates, but they were closed and only people who registered as party members could vote. In fact, if i remember correctly Leopoldo Moreau, the candidate that run in 2003 was elected as a candidate in such a way. It was also used in 1998-1999 to select candidates to represent the alliance between the UCR and the Frepaso that ultimately won the 99 elections. I don't think peronists have a great tradition of primaries though, most of the candidates are chosen by the party heads.

Since 2001 when the UCR collapsed and 2002 when the Justicialist Party (Peronists) split into several factions (well, "People" would be probably more accurate than "factions"), apart from the Moreau example, I don't think there has been any primary in any party for any election.

It might have worked better when we had the 2 party system with the Justicialists and the UCR as the two main ones, but nowadays every douche forms their own party and runs for president. For instance Duhalde and Rodriguez Saa are both peronists associated with the right wing of the party (Duhalde has been recently stereotyped as that though it wasn't always like that) and both agreed to compete in a primary a few months ago. The first election was in the city of Buenos Aires but after that the resulting elections were cancelled and both are running for president. Pino Solanas setting up another socialist candidate that takes votes away from Binner also doesn't make much sense.

It's hard for me to believe this type of thing will change in 2015.

That's really fascinating. Thanks for this long explanation, Edu.

I like this system: I mean, it's very interesting to study .
The problem, in RL, is the fact that you can't vote in October if you don't join the feast now: that's really a bias that is anti-democratic.
No constitutional court's rule on this ?

Well, this has been discussed recently but not by the supreme court as far as I know.
A few weeks ago a judge in the city said that people in the capital had to vote in august or they would be disqualified for October, but she didn't offer any legal opinion, she just said that. On the other hand a judge in the province of Buenos Aires ruled a few days ago that this was unconstitutional, so the 10.000.000 or so eligible voters in the province will be able to vote in October regardless of what they do in August.

Most newspapers editorial are hinting that after the primaries tomorrow that part of the law will start getting overturned and by the October election everyone will be able to vote. Also some suggest that the judge in the Capital said what she said just to try and increase turnout by making a bit of fearmongering because one of the main issues here is that no one is sure people are fully aware how to vote and a lot of people will stay home.

Who knows in this country what might happen, but I think there is a pretty good chance that this part of the law will be removed.

This seems like a huge waste of time. But fun.

   

Time and money, but yeah, it should be interesting


By the way, election officials are already announcing that the counting and subsequent reporting of votes is going to go very slowly. If it's anything like Córdoba then it's a sure bet we'll have the full results on monday or later. Though if Cristina does well, then one only needs to stay up a few hours after midnight, something I intend to do. If it's a competitive election I'll be forced to go to sleep at 4 or 5 AM since I have to work on Monday

Also, every non-Cristina candidate said that they won't be dropping out no matter how many votes they get (obviously we are not counting the guys who won't reach the 1,5% floor). I suppose they have to say this now to avoid demoralising their supporters, but we'll see if they are so confident after Sunday.
The real presidential election should start on Monday