Early voting and transitional emergency

President Mauricio Macri must now resolve the most complex dilemma of all those he has faced in his political life: the desire for reelection or the imperative of transition.

The number of votes obtained by his opponents was so overwhelming that the two circumstances are almost contradictory.

A wave of punishments of an unexpected magnitude, that no opinion poll has been able to detect, has erased all the scenarios imagined by the ruling party, which was banking on a defeat scenario by narrow margins.

Kirchnerism has reached all the conditions of the theoretical ballot. Not just the 45-point threshold, which would be enough. It also far exceeded the minimum gap of 10 points over the second.

Territorial expansion was no less coherent. Macri has survived only in his city and Córdoba. And since there was nothing left alive on the sidelines of polarization, the party in power is short of foreign spaces in which to seek oxygen for the repechage. The opposition is progressing regularly to obtain a solid victory in the first round.

In other words: the primaries were expecting much more than the first round. They highlighted the type of majority construction obtained only at one vote.

The dominant key was punishment. The depth of the crisis unleashed in 2018 explains the fatigue that has crossed the social fabric at all levels. And that also explains the acceleration of elections.

"The word crisis has only one translation: suffering," says sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil. From this point of view, the political acceleration that moved Argentine polls yesterday is not logical. Not only has the sentence been expressed. Rather, the urgency of the solution.

It can be argued that populism has once again fulfilled its usual task of encouraging voters to throw themselves into a pool without water, angry because it is empty. Since yesterday, this reasoning is only lamenting about spilled milk.

As a result, the national government is currently crossing a throat where the electoral race continues, but the factual conditions of a transition already prevail.

With such constant electoral support, Kirchnerism also had the opportunity to deliver a speech with contained and apparently compelling contours. Why provoke in words the corrosion that has already triggered the events?

Macri needed to badert, even with a close defeat, the idea of ​​a stable daily life without the changes in the crisis that had caused so much damage to his re-election project. Cristina Fernández had to show a break with this inertia. A disturbance that changed the social perception of a government that, despite the difficulties, was sailing with the rudder still under minimal control.

Between these two aspirations, that of Cristina is imposed. His best interpreter was the nominated candidate, Alberto Fernández. That he took advantage of his best night to embrace the concept of change that was the cornerstone of the ruling coalition.

Now, time is playing in this challenge. Macri incorporated the unpredictable vote of impersonal market powers into the specifications of the legitimations necessary for re-election.

Unlike surveys, the markets vote every day. Delivered to the oracles and forecasts of the opinion polls, they had given an optimistic departure before the primaries. They will vote again today. And the following days until the end of the transition. Already without the opinion of this curious group of drug addicts that have become Argentinian pollsters.