Briefings & Intelligence

28-05-2015: Latin American Weekly Report

  • LatinNews

Is Argentina’s presidential election becoming a two-horse race?

The third-placed candidate in Argentina’s presidential election contest on 25 October, Sergio Massa, is losing ground to the two leading candidates, Daniel Scioli and Mauricio Macri, opinion surveys suggest. On 26 May, Humberto Zúccaro, the mayor of Pilar in the province of Buenos Aires, announced his decision to abandon Massa’s Frente Renovador (FR) and return to Scioli and President Cristina Fernández’s ruling Frente para la Victoria (FPV) - two rival factions in the Partido Justicialista (PJ, Peronist). The danger for Massa is that as he slips in the opinion polls, others may follow Zúccaro’s lead, jumping ship to either the FPV or Macri’s centre- right opposition party Propuesta Republicana (PRO).

According to the latest Management & Fit poll, published on 24 May, Scioli and Macri are on 33.3% and 32.3% of voting intentions respectively, the distance between them well within the 2% margin of error. Massa, a former Kirchnerista turned alternative centre-left candidate, has fallen a point since the last M&F poll, and is now on 13.8%. The poll consulted 2,400 people aged between 16 and 70 by telephone between 11 and 20 May.

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