The big story from the Argentine midterm elections is the rise of Sergio Massa as the frontrunner for the 2015 presidential election and the likelihood that the era of kirchnerismo is coming to an end.  The fact that Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has been absent from the campaign trail following emergency brain surgery earlier this month, which followed her party’s weak showing in August’s open primaries, only seemed to amplify the narrative that her presidency is entering its lame-duck phase.

But amid the hype over Massa’s rise and the curtail calls for kirchnerismo, it may have escaped attention that Fernández de Kirchner’s ruling Frente para la Victoria (FpV, the Front for Victory) actually won Sunday’s midterm congressional elections.

Voters elected one-half of the 257-member Cámara de Diputados (Chamber of Deputies), the lower house of the Argentine National Congress.  Before the elections, Fernández de Kirchner and her allies control 132 seats — and that’s exactly the number they will control after the elections:

It helped that the Front for Victory was defending just 38 seats in the midterms, which certainly limited exposure and potentially greater losses for the kirchneristas.  But make no mistake — Fernández de Kirchner and her allies will continue to control Argentina’s legislative branch for the final two years of her presidency, even if it will become trickier to pass bills into law.

In absolute votes, the Front for Victory and its kirchnerista allies far outpaced any other broad coalition of parties at the national level, winning 11 of the country’s 23 provinces:

Two other blocs each won about a quarter of the vote. Continue reading Despite lame-duck challenges, CPK and kirchneristas win Argentine midterms →