It was an electoral earthquake foretold.
With most of the votes counted in Argentina’s presidential elections, Alberto Fernández has 48% to the incumbent Mauricio Macri’s 40%. The outgoing president has already conceded defeat and has pledged to work with the incoming administration in the lead-up to December.
The result marks an ignoble end for a leader once heralded as the country’s economic savior. And though markets can be expected to heap some gloom on the dawning of a new Fernández-Kirchner era, the deep and systemic erosion of Argentina’s fiscal and economic position will pose a daunting challenge for the new administration – one that leaves little room for any bold new policy initiatives out of the gates.
Analysis
Back to the future. The poll returns the Peronist party to power after a rare, six-year absence atop Argentine politics. It also caps a stunning comeback for former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who ran as Alberto Fernández’s vice presidential candidate and is believed to be a powerful player behind-the-scenes. De Kirchner is a divisive figure in Argentina; loved by some for her interventionist, poverty-focused policies during her time as president from 2007-2015, and hated by others as a corrupt figure who’s largely responsible for the economic peril that the country now finds itself in. It was presumably this divisive aspect that kept de Kirchner from claiming the top billing on the ticket. There were fears that the potential market blowback and de Kirchner’s legal troubles could combine to sink the Peronist Justicialist Party’s presidential push, but with the benefit of hindsight these fears now seem unwarranted given the series of economic and political self-inflicted wounds that characterized the Macri campaign.
De Kirchner faces several allegations of corruption stemming from her time in power as president, and in some cases the legal proceedings are ongoing. She has yet to be found guilty, but some of the case details – for example, a safety deposit box with $4.6 million stashed in it – would appear somewhat damning on the surface.
