MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Provincial elections in Argentina: ruling FdT wins only 1 province out of 4

Alfredo Cornejo (Mendoza), Osvaldo Jaldo (Tucumán), Claudio Poggi (San Luis).

The opposition Together for Change (Juntos por el Cambio - JxC) celebrated three victories in provincial elections in Argentina on Sunday: Governor Gustavo Valdés of the UCR (a JxC member) celebrated in Corrientes, former Governor Alfredo Cornejo won the open primaries in Mendoza and looks poised to returning to the provincial helm later this year but in San Luis, former Governor Claudio Poggi shocked Governor Alberto Rodríguez Saa's candidate Jorge Fernández. On the other hand, the Peronist Frente de Todos (FdT) of President Alberto Fernández won by a landslide in Tucumán. Lieutenant Governor Osvaldo Jaldo became Governor-elect.

Tucumán

The Frente de Todos achieved Sunday a wide victory over Juntos por el Cambio with Osvaldo Jaldo extending the party's hegemony in the province.

Incumbent Governor Juan Manzur thus achieved to leave behind a man he trusts after stepping down from his vice-governorship candidacy following a Supreme Court ruling banning him.

Jaldo obtained nearly 65% of the votes, against JxC's 28% with Roberto Sánchez and Germán Alfaro as candidates.

Ricardo Bussi, the gubernatorial candidate of Javier Milei's La Libertad Avanza came in third some 55 percentage points behind Jaldo. Bussi's result marks a new defeat for Milei, who has not been able to obtain good results in any of the provinces where elections have been held so far.

Corrientes

ECO, the ruling party of Corrientes, won by a wide margin in the provincial legislative elections, a triumph that was accompanied by the presence in the celebrations of presidential hopeful Horacio Rodríguez Larreta. The ECO-Vamos Corrientes front obtained over 64% of the votes for the legislative elections against the FdT's less than 30% as vote counting was still ongoing.

Mendoza

“We can tell you that the Cambia Mendoza front is ahead of the second by more than 20 points”, said Alfredo Cornejo after 41% of the votes were counted. The ruling Cambia Mendoza front won the provincial primary elections with a lead of more than 20 points leaving the UCR's Alfredo Cornejo as the main candidate to win the Governorship in the Sept. 24 general elections.

With 46.44% of the polling stations counted, Cornejo got 43.91% of the votes: beating fellow Radical Luis Petri.

On the other hand, La Unión Mendoza, which gathers former allies of Cambia Mendoza, was in second place with the candidacy of PRO leader Omar de Marchi: he obtained 19.80%.

Incumbent Governor Rodolfo Suárez was “very satisfied with the election” and remarked that the triumph “is a message for all Argentina: here we govern seriously, against populism.”

Presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich was in Mendoza to celebrate with Cornejo. In her view, it was “a great Sunday for all Together for Change in the country” and remarked the victories in Mendoza, San Luis, and Corrientes.

San Luis

Former Governor Claudio Poggi (2011-2015) will once return to power after breaking up with incumbent Governor Alberto Rodríguez Saa and running on behalf of the opposition, with support from Buenos Aires Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and also from former Governor and President Adolfo Rodríguez Saa. Cambia San Luis' Poggi beat Alberto's candidate Jorge Fernández. By 3.30 am on Monday, with a little more than 80% of the votes counted, the opposition candidate had 52.99% of the votes and was ahead of Fernández by almost 7 points.