On October 25th a general election was held in Argentina. Voters went to the polls in order to choose both the President and the Congress, while some provinces also elected governors. For the presidential race a second round was needed according to the electoral laws in Argentina after the surprisingly close results of the first round. This was the first time a presidential runoff was needed in Argentina.
In Argentina, presidents are elected using the ballotage system which is a modified version of the two-round system. To be proclaimed elected president one of the candidates needs to receive at least 45% of the votes or 40% and be ahead of the second candidate by 10%. There were three candidates in the race: Mauricio Macri (Cambiemos), Daniel Scioli (FPV) and Sergio Massa (UNA). The results were: 38% for Scioli, 30% for Macri and 20% for mass. The ballotage was carried out on November 22nd between Macri and Scioli, in this round the vote favoured Macri with 51% of the votes and 48% for Scioli.
Turnout for these elections were high: 81% or 26,048,320 votes for the first and 80% or 25,952,906 for the runoff. Voting in Argentina is mandatory for everyone between the ages of 18 and 70. Citizens 16 and 17 years old citizens have the option to vote or to abstain.
For Congress, there were 130 seats up for election and 24 for the Senate. The former were allocated using the D’Hondt method of proportional representation with a 3% threshold. While the senators were elected using a closed list procedure, where the party receiving the most votes won 2 seats and the second party one seat.
Sources:
http://www.idea.int/db/countryview.cfm?id=12
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_general_election,_2015
http://www.clarin.com/elecciones-2015-resultados/
