BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Buenos Aires's conservative Mayor Mauricio Macri won re-election by a wide margin Sunday, defeating the candidate backed by Argentina's left-of-center president, exit polls indicated.
Argentine media cited preliminary unofficial results in reporting that Macri got more than 60 percent of the votes in the runoff election against Sen. Daniel Filmus, who was hand-picked by President Cristina Fernandez to run against one of her strongest opponents.
"We ran a campaign of values: tolerance, dialogue, independence," said Maria Eugenia Vidal, Macri's running-mate. "We didn't want conflict but we remained firm with our convictions."
Representatives of Filmus said they would await official results before commenting.
As mayor of Argentina's capital, Macri has been a powerful counterpoint to the national government and considered running against Fernandez in this year's presidential election before deciding on a safer re-election bid.
Buenos Aires' 2.4 million voters account for nearly 9 percent of Argentina's voting population, so the city's election was being watched as a possible indicator of sympathies for the president just two weeks before the Aug. 14 presidential primary. Still, the capital's voters often pick mayors from parties that oppose the president.
Macri used his presidency of the popular Boca Juniors football club as a springboard to enter politics as leader of the center-right PRO party.
His victory Sunday was the second blow in as many weeks to Fernandez's governing Front For Victory party. On July 24, the president's candidate for governor of Santa Fe province came in third behind a socialist and a comedian who backed by Macri.