RIGHT-WING candidate Mauricio Macri has won the run-off in Argentina’s presidential election by a narrow margin, ending 12 years of “Kirchnerismo.”

With almost all ballots counted this morning Mr Macri had 51.5 per cent of the vote to ruling Front for Victory (FPV) candidate Daniel Scioli’s 48.5.

Mr Macri thanked supporters of his Republican Proposal (PRO) party, saying: “I am here because you all decided it … We can build trust, something we need here in Argentina,”

“Us Argentines know that the country we dream of, we have to build together … We have to build an Argentina with zero poverty, we have to confront the drug smuggling,” he said.

Mr Scioli had pledged to continue the programme of economic and social development begun by his predecessors Cristina Fernandez and her late husband Nestor Kirchner.

Conceding defeat on Sunday, Mr Scioli said: “The people have chosen an alternative.

“I have defended my ideas and our achievements with much conviction (but) the results show a definitive tendency,” he said.

Mr Macri’s vice-president-elect Gabriela Michetti promised to “build new things on what has already been built.”

Mr Scioli pointed out many times during the campaign that his opponent had taken a “copy and paste” approach to his election manifesto, appropriating the government’s most successful poverty-reducing policies as its own.

But Mr Macri has also pledged free-market “reforms” and to lift restrictions on trade in US dollars — potentially heralding a sharp fall in the peso.

He has also promised closer relations with the United States, whose finance industry the FPV blames for the country’s 1998-2002 economic depression.

Ms Fernandez congratulated Mr Macri and said the two would meet formally today.

The defeat for the FPV is the first major reversal of Latin America’s so-called pink tide at the ballot box — rather than through a coup d’etat, as in Honduras in 2009, or fraud, which skewed this year’s Guyanese election.

Venezuela, which has led the continent’s left-wing resurgence, will hold parliamentary elections on December 4.

US-backed Venezuelan opposition figures including veteran Henrique Capriles and Lilian Tintori, the wife of Leopoldo Lopez — recently jailed for inciting deadly riots last year — were quick to congratulate Mr Macri on his victory.