Argentine primary to test CFK’s electoral clout

Argentina's primary election today is expected to provide the clearest sign yet of whether President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner will win a strong mandate in October to deepen her leftist policies.

Fernández de Kirchner is seen as one the leading candidates to win a second term in the October 23 presidential election. But if she gets less than 40 percent of the primary vote, and if a strong challenger emerges to unite the opposition, the race could become more competitive.

The 58-year-old Peronist leader is popular, although she has infuriated farmers and grains exporters with interventionist policies meant to strengthen the hand of the state in Latin America's third largest economy. Wall Street criticizes Fernández de Kirchner for imposing price controls, raiding central bank reserves to make debt payments and publishing inflation data that underestimate what private economists say is a real annual rate of over 20 percent.

She is nonetheless expected to be the biggest vote-getter on the primaries. The question posed by analysts is by how much and who will emerge as her main rival. This is the first unified primary that Argentina has ever held. Participation is mandatory but there was much uncertainty about how many voters would in fact turn out.

All political parties have already anointed presidential candidates – turning the primary into a dress rehearsal for October.

Opinion polls have shown the president's support in the range of 40 percent to 50 percent. Neither of her top two competitors – Radical party lawmaker Ricardo Alfonsín and former Peronist President Eduardo Duhalde – gets more than 15 percent in most surveys.

Although the recent defeat of government-allied candidates in key provincial elections bruised her image of invincibility, the president's campaign is benefiting from strong economic growth driven in part by booming grain export revenues.

She says her second government will be dedicated to the memory of her late husband, Néstor Kirchner, who died last year. He preceded Cristina Fernández as president and set the tone for many of her policies, which emphasize import substitution and subsidies for the poor.

Kirchner and Fernández are credited by supporters with steering the country back toward prosperity after a devastating financial crisis in 2001 and 2002.

"As it turns out, we were right," Fernández de Kirchner recently said in a comment aimed at Wall Street analysts who warned that her policies would lead to ruin. She promises to "deepen the model" of her government if she wins a second four-year term.

Argentina is the world's second largest corn exporter and its third largest provider of soybeans. Fernandez has feuded for years with growers who say her interventionist policies, including export curbs on corn and wheat, hurt profits and dampen investment.

Fernández attracts few votes in sparsely populated rural areas. But she has a wide following in the vote-heavy Buenos Aires suburbs, which form the cradle of her support.