For many weeks this space was almost a voice in the wilderness in insisting that next Sunday’s elections are not centred around the Buenos Aires provincial race (as ex-president Néstor Kirchner has been seeking to brainwash everybody into believing) but the overall distribution of seats and control of Congress, yet few enough pundits now continue to assert that this election will be decided in the meaner streets of Greater Buenos Aires. And this is not just because Kirchner runs every risk of being edged out of his main stronghold by Peronist challenger Francisco de Narváez in an increasingly polarized race — even if Kirchner does squeak through, his triumph will only have a relative value. Relative for various reasons — because of the shadow of fraud (not least with current events in Iran), because of the extremely low socio-economic quality of the votes which would confer victory (in a model which boasts of economic success but thrives politically on growing poverty) and, perhaps above all, somebody who can barely scrape a third of the vote in his main stronghold will not be seen as the best leader by a Peronist movement accustomed to runaway victory.

But quite apart from the outcome in the nation’s largest electoral district, other races which had been taken for granted or deemed unimportant are starting to come to the fore. Sunday’s election might feature not only the defeat of Kirchner but also that of his likeliest (although not chosen) Peronist heir, Santa Fe Senator Carlos Reutemann — that province’s socialist government is making its local weight felt (especially in Rosario) at his expense. And while City Mayor Mauricio Macri faces no problems in continuing his domination of this metropolis (even with scant chance of retaining his absolute majority), the battles between the runners-up are far more fascinating — the leftist Fernando “Pino” Solanas (who also has independent support) is not only threatening to displace Kirchner’s candidate Carlos Heller from third place but even Elisa Carrió’s Civil and Social Accord from second. This remarkable concentration of an exceptionally fragmented leftist vote would not be possible without at least two shifts in perceptions — that the real interest of the Kirchners is themselves rather than the progressive causes they champion and that Carrió has moved sharply to the right.

All of which does not exhaust various interesting and important contests shaping up nationwide and far less the many problems facing this country, whose resolution has been the great orphan of this campaign.