The Buenos Aires City election: Lousteau wins his seat by 1,411 votes, and the Libertarians ask to wait for the final count.

Amid the electoral defeat in Provincias Unidas' national debut , Radical Martín Lousteau had a consolation prize: according to the preliminary count, he won the last of the 13 seats for national deputy up for grabs in the City of Buenos Aires . However, given the narrow margin by which he obtained it, according to the preliminary tally, the La Libertad Avanza coalition is asking to wait for the final count.

The story, and the calculations, are as follows: Lousteau, the lead candidate for Ciudadanos Unidos, received 97,794 votes. And according to the D'Hondt system that determines the distribution, the eighth candidate on the Libertarian list, Valeria Rodrigues Trimarchi, received 96,383. This is the number obtained by dividing the total number of LLA votes (771,065) by eight.

With these numbers, the ruling party gets 7 deputies in the City, Fuerza Patria 4 (thanks to its 439,196 votes), the Left Front 1 (148,438 votes) and Ciudadanos Unidos 1 (97,794).

" The difference we have is irreversible. We have the tally sheets from all the polling stations and there are no irregularities. We understand that they're engaging in 'media terrorism,' but the number is insurmountable," sources close to Lousteau told Clarín .

"There are 44 ballot boxes left to open. Tomorrow (Wednesday) we'll do the final count, which will also include the votes from abroad. We're waiting with bated breath. The preliminary count was based on 98% of the polling stations reporting," responded the libertarian command.

The president of the UCR is currently a senator for the City (he had entered in 2019, within the framework of an agreement with Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and as part of Juntos por el Cambio), but now he has decided to head the list for the lower house.

He played it safe: his running mate for the Senate, Graciela Ocaña (nominated here by Larreta, which led Facundo Manes to go to another list), finished fourth, with 5.09% of the votes and far from the possibility of taking the seat left by Lousteau.

As Clarín reported, Provincias Unidas' performance fell far short of expectations for establishing itself as a national alternative outside the political divide. With a presence in 14 districts, they barely surpassed 7% of the national vote.

In any case, that would be enough to reach a bloc of 20 deputies (between those who remain and those who enter) and thus become an intermediate bloc to negotiate with the national government.

The performance of the space was between fair and poor in the main districts: in the province of Buenos Aires, the list headed by Florencio Randazzo finished fifth, even below the Left Front and the debutant Fernando Burlando .

In Córdoba, Juan Schiaretti's gamble also fell short : although he won a seat, he came in second and was left far behind in his plan to run for president again in 2027.

And in Santa Fe, where Governor Maximiliano Pullaro played his vice president (the former Macri supporter Scaglia), they finished third behind the libertarians and Peronism.