Macri supporters pray for miracle before vote

Bloomberg

Argentine President Mauricio Macri’s election prospects are talked about in the markets, by pundits and by diplomats as largely set in stone.
He is expected to lose on Sunday to opposition candidate Alberto Fernandez.
The slimmest of windows exists for him to force the presidential race into a second-round runoff vote in November. But that’s enough for 45 year-old teacher Maria Orcoyen.
Orcoyen donned Argentina’s flag to cheer for Macri alongside hundreds of thousands in Buenos Aires, a stronghold of support for the president.
Macri has drawn sizable crowds in recent weeks, crossing the country trying to keep his election hopes alive.
But with more than 16 percentage points to make up (the size of his loss to Fernandez in a primary on August 11), the odds are against him.
He needs voters who didn’t come out in August to now do so, and he needs Fernandez supporters to switch sides.
“You would need a miracle really to turn around this election,” said Miguel Kiguel, director of consulting firm EconViews and a former World Bank economist.
Voters turned on Macri in August after he failed to deliver on pledges to ensure single-digit inflation and zero poverty.
His austerity also led to huge increases in utility bills, making it harder for people to live paycheck to paycheck.
Still, Fernandez’s left-leaning, populist policies — where he has promised to boost salaries and freeze utility bills — are making investors and the markets uneasy given an economy in trouble has drained government coffers. Looking at “affirmative votes,” — only ballots cast for one of the six main candidates, excluding those that were blank or invalid — Fernandez won 49.5% in the primary, while Macri took 32.9%, according to government data.
Only affirmative votes will be counted on Sunday.