The last images before the shipwreck: The 2001 elections in Argentina

The 2001 elections represent a turning point in party politics in Argentina. For the first time, with the peronist participating in open elections, the two most important parties gathered 44 % of the vote. Meanwhile, the negative vote (blanc and null vote) and other parties reached an unprecedented majority of the vote. Key to a correct interpretation of this phenomena is an accurate estimation of the political origin of the 2001 vote. In this article we provide a vote transition matrix that estimates the procedence of the 2001 "protest" vote. The results, obtained by three different ecological inference methods (Goodman, King's El and GWR-El), show significant party differences in vote transfers. The more extense vote transfer from the Alianza to minority parties provides an interesting contrast with the massive shift from Conservative voters to the null option or the moderate Peronist transfers to the blanc vote. This article provides evidence of the different party realignments that explain the 2001 vote and insights into the significant geographic and political differences that emerge from the political parties crisis.