Ballotage it is! And Macri even managed an initial lead over Scioli.

ARGENTINA - In Brief 26 Oct 2015 by Esteban Fernández Medrano

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With so far 76% of the votes accounted for, the prelaminar results indicate that there will be a second round presidential election on November the 22nd, i.e. Scioli did not manage to win in the first round. Not only did the governor of the Province of Buenos Aires miss the 40% hurdle (so far with just 35.24% of voter’s support he is 3p.p. below the projections of the polls), but he did not manage to obtain the needed 10p.p. difference with Macri. In fact, given the preliminary results Macri managed a surprisingly strong result, leading over Scioli with 35.66% of the votes, compared to the polls that suggested an outcome hardly above 30%. While these results will surely change in favor of Scioli as the coverage gets closer to 100%, given that the votes of the interior of the country will have bias towards the FpV, Macri’s current lead is large enough so that all participating parties (even Scioli) already accepted that there will be a ballotage. Note though that Macri’s initial lead over Scioli was more than 2p.p. when the voters coverage was close to 65%. We would expect to Scioli end winning the elections, but with a smaller than expected margin, As we said in previous reports: The key question in such ballotage is whether Massa’s and Rodriguez Saa’s anti-K Peronist (i.e. more "right-wing" Peronists) are more Peronist or more anti-K. Given our assumption that there might be some sort of agreement between Macri and Massa (Massa could be offered to participate in the executive, with for example becoming the interior minister), the current results offer Macri good chances to win the ballotage. Another important aspect to consider is the government of the Province of Bue...