Popularity Ratings

So, Cristina - quite recently the least popular Premier in Latin America (click right to enlarge) - won the primaries last weekend, hands down, with a smooth 50% of the vote, 38% more than the next best candidate.

Cristina made several statements about how the Primaries show Argentina's voting system is more transparent than ever. That may be, but the net is hardly thrown wider: the three main candidates were the current President, who's husband was the previous Prez, Duhalde, President in 2002-3, and Alfonsín, a President's son.

Not even following the politics closely, it would impossible not to know that La Presidenta's popularity rating fell like a lead cliché in her first term, dropping as low as 23%. Then again, if you use the Maths by which they calculate inflation, that figure is actually 67%. Go fiddle. 

Her rating did rise after her husband, Nestor, died of a heart attack suddenly last year, an experience she faced with dignity.

Time to buy some choripan?

But it does not explain how she then got 50% of the vote, 38% more than the next best candidate? A classic Argentine paradox?

Marriage

It was explained to me as follows: It's like a marriage. You may well find that your initial popularity rating with the other half is quite high, but that will plummet after a brief honeymoon period. That said, when it comes round to decision time, there are simply no other credible candidates so, in spite of a pop rating of around 14%, you still get the nod for another term.

Vote: Green screen or rent-a-crowd? 

Still, Fuerza, Crissie, and good luck in the next term. It should be an interesting second round, given that in her first round Wikip will tell you , not necessarily in these words, that she pissed off:
- the United States (suitcases of dollars, rocking up late to the G20, WikiLeaks...)
- all the farmers (hiking levies up by over 10% overnight)
- people who like water (vetoing a law that "jeopardised 75% of the world's water supplies")
- more than half of the press tried (trying to bully out of publication the opposition newspaper, Clarín
- the British (Malvinas/Falklands, and her refusal to say sorry more)
- her country's Central Bank (trying to re-route $6.7b of public funds to pay off interest: when blocked by the Central Bank's President, she had him removed, which turned out to be illegal, whereupon he was reinstated, whereupon he resigned with the famous parting line: "Fuck this")
- people who aren't millionaires (her private asset wealth has rise 572% during her and her husband's Presidency)
- Brazil (can't recall why).

Now, obviously if you dislike many of the above - and who doesn't get pissed off with the Yanks, the Brits and water from time to time? -  then you'll find a vote or two.

This entry is ridiculously one-sided of course and mostly partly sort-of made up for humorous reasons. I  state for partiality that many would point to the massive improvements she has made in reforming children's education, in promotion of Human and Equal Rights, and that she presides over a country with an economy that continues to grow. Oh, and whose teenagers don't do allota lootin', are nice to children, and give their seats to people on buses.