First post-election surveys forecast different winners

The first public opinion surveys issued in the wake of last Sunday’s presidential election are forecasting different winners – even though they both correctly predicted the result of the vote.

Following the surprise comeback by ruling coalition candidate Sergio Massa in the vote, one poll says he will emerge victorious in the November 19 run-off and the other says libertarian rival Javier Milei will be Argentina’s next president.

In the former, CB Consultora came up with a very even scenario, giving a slight edge for Javier Milei (50.7 percent) over Sergio Massa (49.3 percent). Votes that were void or “blank” were removed.

Yet the second assessment by the Proyecciones consultancy firm produced a completely different scenario: 44.6 percent of respondents said they would vote Massa, 34.2 percent went for Milei. In addition, 8.3 percent said they do not know who to vote for, 5.9 percent said they would cast a ‘blank’ or invalid vote, and seven percent would not even vote at all.

The polls of both firms are closely watched - both CB Consultora and Proyecciones forecast prior to the October 22 election that Massa and Milei would be in the run-off.

According to Marcelo Zunino, one of the directors of Proyecciones, “in this first survey, Sergio Massa consolidates his domination in Buenos Aires Province and gets back votes outside the city.”

Proyecciones conducted the study between October 23 and 24 from among 1,459 actual and online cases via geo-localised sample point, with a 2.63-percent margin of error.

According to the poll, Massa and Milei are quite even in terms of image. While the Unión por la Patria standard-bearer has a 40.3 percent positive image, the libertarian leader reaches 38.9 percent. They are also very close in terms of negatives too: Massa, 57.7 percent; and Milei, 56.4 percent.

When it comes to dividing voting intention by gender, 51.3 percent of women and 37.3 percent of men lean towards the Massa-rossi ticket, while 29.2 and 39.7 percent respectively go for Milei-villaruel.