BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AFP) — Peronist candidate Alberto Fernandez won Argentina’s presidential election in the first round yesterday, official results showed, with 75 per cent of the votes counted.

Fernandez, 60, had 47.36 per cent of the votes — crossing the threshold for outright victory — with center-right incumbent Mauricio Macri trailing at 41.22 per cent.

To win outright, Fernandez required 45 per cent, or 40 per cent with a 10-point margin over his nearest rival.

The leftist presidential front-runner surged into a strong lead over business-friendly incumbent Maurico Macri exit polls said, though it was too early to know if he had won an outright first-round victory.

Exit polls put the 60-year-old lawyer, whose running mate is ex-President Cristina Kirchner, in the lead shortly after polling closed at 6:00 pm.

Thousands of ecstatic Fernandez supporters cheered and danced outside his Frente de Todos party headquarters in Buenos Aires.

“It’s a great day for Argentina,” a smiling Fernandez told reporters.

Macri, 60, whose popularity has fallen sharply in the last year as Argentina battled recession and market turmoil, said competing “visions of the future are at stake”, in the vote.

After casting his vote in the early afternoon in the Palermo district of Buenos Aires, he admitted that he was “anxiously waiting” for 9:00 pm (midnight GMT) to roll around, when the first results are expected.

The interior ministry said turnout in yesterday’s general election was over 80 per cent after a campaign dominated by the crippling economic crisis affecting Latin America’s second-biggest economy.

Macri had called for a massive turnout, which analysts see as his main hope of closing the gap on Fernandez and forcing a second round.

Fernandez vowed to end sharp divisions between his Peronist movement and supporters of the business-friendly incumbent.

“The days of ‘us’ and ‘them’ are over,” the mustachioed leftist leader said after voting in the swanky Puerto Madero neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. “We are in an enormous crisis. Everyone has to take responsibility for what’s ahead.”

The election comes amid high tensions in the region, with massive protests in neighbouring Chile and Bolivia, as well as recent unrest over inequality in Ecuador.