Argentina expected to give Fernández de Kirchner historic re-election win

Argentineans will go to the polls on Sunday in an election that could give President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner an historic re-election sweep, with race results not seen since the return of democracy in 1983.

The latest polls show that Fernández could garner between 53 and 55 percent of the popular vote - higher than the 51.7 percent Radical Civic Party candidate Raúl Alfonsín received in 1983, and just below what Hipólito Yrigoyen got in the 1920s. General Juan Domingo Perón holds the vote-gleaning record of 62 percent for one election.

Over the past two months, the campaign has been a lack-luster one due to frustration among opposition candidates, who have been set back by Fernández's approval ratings. In August, during a national primary to select the top candidates, the president easily placed first, 38 points ahead of her nearest contender.

Despite her popularity, over the past few weeks Fernández has had to reduce her public appearances. Bouts of hypertension and then the unexpected death of her sister-in-law's boyfriend has forced her off the campaign trail.

Fernández is expected to hold her campaign-closing rally on Wednesday with a reduced number of supporters at the Coliseo Theater in Buenos Aires.

The sense that her opponents feel impotent against their main rival was evident in a recent television campaign ad broadcast by Ricardo Alfonsín, the son of the late former president and until recently one of her strongest rivals. "You are probably going to win the next election," he tells her in the ad. "But, with all due respect, I have the duty to tell you something: I don't believe a word you say.

"Someone had to tell Cristina, and who can do it better than me," he concludes.

Alfonsín's Radical Party is seeking to become the country's main opposition force behind Fernández's Peronist-Kirchner faction. A deputy in Congress, Alfonsín is now trying to place second in the elections to prevent socialist Hermes Binner, who has climbed as the candidate with the second-best showing in the polls, from gaining that spot. He also wants to head off former President Eduardo Duhalde and Alberto Rodríguez Saá - candidates from two other Peronist factions described as "anti-Kirchnerists" - from becoming the main opposition leaders.

Fernández, whose husband - the former President Néstor Kirchner - died suddenly about a year ago from a heart attack, had been coy up until several months ago as to whether she would run for re-election.

Before her husband's death, it was widely believed that Fernández would not run to allow her husband, who governed Argentina from 2003 to 2007, a shot at a second term.

While Argentina has seen consistent growth over the past eight years, including a rebound from a 2009 recession, inflation remains high, at 22 percent last year.

Fernández, a leftist, has had problems with the unions over various social and economic policies. The country's main union, CGT - a traditionally Peronist-backed institution - warned the president on Monday to pay more attention to workers and embark on her past promises of providing more homes to people on low incomes.

"If governments want to prosper, they cannot divorce themselves from the workers," said CGT secretary general Hugo Moyano in a public address Monday at an event to celebrate the Day of Peronist Loyalty, which was established in the 1950s by Juan Perón and his then-wife Eva Duarte.