If he falls short of that, the two leading candidates will face off in a second round next month. Opposition leaders claimed Sunday night that their candidate had go…
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Scioli furiously tweeted as the results came in Sunday, kickstarting his campaign for the next few weeks in the lead-up to the November 22 runoff.
Scioli, the governor of the Buenos Aires province and a former vice president, was the chosen successor to Fernandez, who nears the end of her second term with approval ratings around 50 percent. In a surprise that every na…
“Tonight there is a second round in Argentina”, said Maria Eugenia Vidal, a top adviser to Macri.
Sunday’s presidential election shook up the political landscape.
Opinion polls had indicated Scioli was on the cusp of winning outright, but the race proved to be far closer than predicted.
Buenos Aires’ blue-chip Merval index has already surged around 32 percent this year while yields have fallen on Argentine bonds which can still be traded even though the country is officially in default.
Fernandez won admirers for rewriting the South American country’s social contract but also drew sharp criticism for widespread allegations of corruption in her administration and for fights with political opponents and other nations that many Argentines found tiresome.
According to the constitution, to win the presidency a candidate must either win 45% of the vote or have an advantage of 10 percentage points over their closest rival. “There’s an enormous desire in society for less polarization”, said Mariel Fornoni, of the polling company Management and Fit.
Earlier, five major television broadcasters put Scioli in the lead as counting got under way.
Gambling that voters would be afraid of rapid change, notably after Argentina’s 2000-2002 economic meltdown, Mr Scioli was offering a more “gradualist” platform with more timid steps to deal with the imbalances including the outstanding debt, which bars the country from worldwide debt markets, and an out-of-kilter currency that is ripe for a devaluation.
Scioli’s rival, Mauricio Macri, similarly took to Twitter. Both candidates have promised to bring inflation down. Negotiations between him and Macri before the election fell apart.
Analysts expected many who supported Massa in the primary to defect to one of the two frontrunners – to Macri due to his opposition to the incumbent party, or to Scioli due to their parties’ common Peronist identity. Her late husband Nestor Kirchner stepped down in 2007 and took up a role in Mercosur, the regional economic block.
“I ask those who chose another proposal to accompany me”, Scioli said in a televised speech ahead of the release of the first results Sunday.
“I want to preserve everything we have achieved in these years”, said Blanco, a 40-year-old clothing store manager.
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Argentine assets soared on Monday, with the defaulted 2038 euro-denominated issue hitting a record high of 56.167 cents and banking stocks traded in New York rising more than 20 percent.
