Macri wins Buenos Aires mayoral race

Reuters/Buenos Aires

Mayor of Buenos Aires Mauricio Macri (left) and his running mate and Social Works Minister of Buenos Aires, Maria Eugenia Vidal (right), celebrate his re-election after the second electoral round against Senator Daniel Filmus on Sunday

Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri won re-election on Sunday, beating Argentine President Cristina Fernandez’s candidate by nearly 30 percentage points and raising doubts about her invincibility in an October vote.Macri won 64.3% of votes compared with Peronist senator Daniel Filmus’s 35.7%, official results showed. This meant support for the centre-right leader rose more than 3 percentage points from 2007, when the two men first faced off.Filmus’s defeat was largely expected in a capital city where anti-Peronist feeling runs deep.But this result combined with a stinging setback in a key provincial election last weekend could hurt Fernandez’s chances of re-election on Oct. 23, which had been viewed as a foregone conclusion due to her wide lead in polls.“This doesn’t change the scenario substantially ... in 2007 (the ruling party suffered) a series of electoral defeats and Cristina Fernandez went on to win with 46% of votes,” political analyst Graciela Romer told local television.“There is an idea taking hold, however, that it’s not so clear a Fernandez victory is inevitable,” Romer said.Filmus’s performance gives a sense of how Fernandez may fare in the capital during an upcoming nationwide primary and again in October, when she must garner at least 40% of the vote to win in the first round.Filmus told supporters he took “personal responsibility” for the defeat and vowed to analyse what went wrong.