Argentine General Election of 1983

Raul Alfonsin won 51.7 percent as Argentina restored democracy after the junta.

Overview

The October 30, 1983 election, the first free national vote since 1973, gave the Radical Civic Union's Raul Alfonsin 51.7 percent over the Peronists' Italo Luder, on roughly 85 percent turnout, ending the military regime disgraced by the Falklands war and the disappeared. Alfonsin launched the 1985 junta trial, the first time a democracy prosecuted its own predecessor dictators, and managed economic crisis toward hyperinflation. The 1983 vote stands as the foundational moment of Argentina's restored democracy, contested but never again interrupted by the military.