Five points on Argentina's PASO
Macri's new goal is to prevent a first round victory by his opponents
The polls were wrong.
No poll successfully predicted that Fernandez-Fernandez would obtain over 47% of the vote nor that they would have a 15 point gap over the Macri-Pichetto ticket’s 32%. To win in the first round scheduled for October, a candidate needs 45% or 40% plus a 10% margin of difference over second place, meaning the result in yesterday’s primary would have been good enough for a first round victory. That polling miss cannot be explained by turnout, which was 75%, around the same as 2015. The error in the primaries will place the polls in doubt for the first round. The major polling firms need to review their models.
What happened? Consolidation of the anti-Macri vote.
The president’s vote total was relatively close to his polling average. The Fernandez-Fernandez ticket greatly over-performed for four reasons:
Nearly every voter who was angry at the president and the economy chose to turn out for the leading opposition candidate rather than divide their votes among other candidates.
The large anti-Macri turnout suggests the population’s concerns over the economy are much greater than polling had shown previously.
The Peronist and Kirchner political machines are well organized and turning out voters in large numbers. On top of the big national win, the organization showed likely victories at the state and local level.
Alberto Fernandez appears to be successfully distancing himself from anti-Kirchner sentiment.
Third party burnout.
As a consequence of the anti-Macri vote consolidating, the Lavanga-Urtubey won 8.5% of the vote and no other candidate pairing took over 3%. The poor performance by the other candidates and the potential for a first round victory by Fernandez-Fernandez ensures a two way race moving forward.
The markets are going to panic.
Argentina stocks, bonds and the peso are going to crash today. As I’ve written previously, this is likely to create a negative feedback loop for Macri, worsening the economy right before the election.
While the market panic is most likely to harm Macri, one risk to the Fernandez campaign’s effort to win in the first round is that voters fear that an election victory by the opposition will lead to a market crash. Alberto Fernandez’s message last night was “We were never crazy while in power.”, not the most compelling campaign slogan but one he needs voters to believe if he wants to maintain his current levels of support.
Fernandez-Fernandez under the spotlight as the campaign turns even more negative.
In the 2015 PASO, Kirchner-loyalist Daniel Scioli won 38% against 30% for Cambiemos (divided among three candidates including Macri). After that primary, the anti-Kirchner vote consolidated behind Macri, prevented a first round victory for Scioli and created the opening for Macri to win in the second round. Macri doesn’t need to win in October; he just needs to prevent a first round win by his opponents. There will be intense scrutiny of Fernandez and the previous Kirchner administration by the media. Macri’s campaign is going to need to go intensely negative, hitting his opponent’s record on the economy, corruption and security to remind voters why Kirchner lost power four years ago.