It's an unusual election here, as everyone is sure that Cristina will win. In a more typical year with an unpredictable outcome, there would be heated political conversations steaming through the city. From what I've seen, there's a sort of playful dissing of Cristina's acension to the presidency, but not so much angry opposition.
Voting is mandatory here, with a threatened 2-year jail sentence for non-participation. I assume that the polling places with be chaotic--even the system for finding out where you have to vote is difficult to follow. There are websites and hotlines, but several people I've met didn't know yesterday, exactly where they had to go to vote today. (Lots of people have to go back to their parents' neighborhoods because they never changed their official voting address when they moved away.)
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ELECTION UPDATE: Yep, it was a mess. The lines for voting were dreadfully long and, worse, a lot of people found that when they got to the polling place, they couldn't vote for their candidate because they had run out of ballots. To vote here, you cut out a literal ballot, a piece of paper with the name of your candidate printed on it. Many people arrive with their ballots already. There are 736 political parties. OK, I have no idea how many there are, but no one here does either. There are scads of tiny parties whose candidates will receive exactly as many votes as they have family members of voting age. Before the election, parties send out or distribute their ballots. But there are supposed to be ballots available at the polls, too. Yesterday, not so much. So if you got there and there were no ballots left for your candidate, you had to leave the polling place, go to an office of the party of your choice, get a ballot, and then return to the polls. The delays were so long that for the first time in Argentine history they decided to extend the voting hours by one hour.
So, basically, two unsurprising winners: Cristina and General Confusion.
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