Argentina is looking into an unknown country this Sunday. Around 35 million people are called to vote for a president after the election campaign was weighed down by the economic crisis and the right-wing extremist agenda. Argentines will choose between the economy minister of a worn-out Peronist government, a former conservative security minister who prevailed in the traditional right’s internal elections, and an ultra who set the pace of the campaign through his agitation against government spending and traditional politicians. A scenario of thirds unprecedented in 40 years of democracy in Argentina, in which the parties that have fought for control of politics so far this century are yearning to fight for second place, for the second round on November 19th to force.
The stage is open. The far right is leading the polls, but none are producing the results necessary to avoid a second round: 45% of the vote, or at least 40% with a 10-point lead over the second round. These are some key data before the elections on Sunday, October 22nd.
Who are the candidates?
Javier Milei has become the rival to beat. A former economic adviser who was overshadowed by politicians and businessmen, a television talk show host who broke up audiences with screams, and a national representative who brought the far right to Congress two years ago, seven million voted last August People in the primary election for Milei er came in first place with 29.08% of the vote. Milei laid the groundwork: he not only advanced the debate about dollarizing an economy with skyrocketing inflation or the need for unfettered fiscal adjustment; It also led the country to talk about liberalizing the arms market or selling organs and children.
This was followed by the “Together for Change” alliance, which divided 28% of the vote between hawks and doves. The center-right coalition that led Mauricio Macri to the presidency between 2015 and 2019 ended up electing the hawks: Patricia Bullrich, Macri’s former minister, won the candidacy with a strong hand against insecurity as its banner. As a civil servant, she sparked controversy for defending police officers accused of excesses and murders, and as a presidential candidate, she promises to lower the age of criminal liability, reform the penal code to establish a special system for the lawful defense of uniformed officers, and maximum security prisons . He won against the moderate Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, mayor of the city of Buenos Aires and former Macri Delfin, and this Sunday he will face the challenge of keeping his votes.
Myriam Bregman, Sergio Massa, Patricia Bullrich, Juan Schiaretti and Javier Milei. Agencies
Peronism chose its candidate in time. Sergio Massa, leader of one of the factions of the ruling coalition, led the Congress of Deputies until he took over the Ministry of Economy in July 2022 in the middle of the crisis. Government factions fought over the newly signed agreement with the International Monetary Fund to refinance the debt, and Massa took charge of the agreements and control of inflation. He didn’t succeed, but as a career politician with presidential ambitions, the jump to the front paid off for him. Inflation is almost 140% and poverty is ruining 40% of Argentines, but without strong leaders, Peronism rose up behind them. The Peronist coalition, renamed the Union for the Homeland, came third in the primaries with 27.28% of the vote, but Massa was the second-most voted candidate behind Milei. Today is the day with the best chance of forcing a second round.
Behind the three strong candidates waits Trotskyist Myriam Bregman, a Left Front candidate who received 2.61% of the vote in the primaries but hopes to capture a progressivism that is not matched by Massa’s pragmatism. Another candidate hoping for a surprise is the conservative Peronist Juan Schiaretti, governor of the province of Córdoba in the center of the country. A voice of federalism in a political panorama that looks to and from the capital, Schiaretti received 3.71% of the vote in the primaries.
The economic crisis is at the heart of the campaign
Argentina hit an annual inflation rate of 138.3% last month. The country has become accustomed to inflation breaking historic records month after month, and in September alone prices rose 12.7%. The minimum wage in Argentina is 132,000 pesos, or around $380 at the official exchange rate, and two of them is not enough to cover the family’s basic needs. 40% of Argentines, about 18 million people, are poor, although unemployment is at its highest level in almost two decades: only 6.2% of working-age adults are unemployed.
Aerial view of a corn field during the March drought in Timbúes (Santa Fe province).Sebastián López Brach (Getty Images)
Argentina has central bank reserves in deficit, foreign currency revenues have collapsed due to an unprecedented drought that has affected the agro-industrial sector and a $44,000 million debt to the IMF that the Macri government took on in 2018 . Peronism was renegotiated at the beginning of last year, and yet the payments were a tough race: he managed to settle the last payments with other loans from international organizations or even with Chinese yuan. The current Peronist government held a final negotiation over its payment plan in August and has since incorporated open criticism of the organization into its election campaign. The IMF is calling for a fiscal adjustment, and Massa has in recent months cut subsidies and opened a special foreign exchange market for dozens of exports, aiming to accumulate foreign currency. But none of their actions could prevent an 18% devaluation after the August 13 primary election.
Since August 14, the official price of the dollar is 365 pesos per US currency, but the peso is devalued at the rate of the illegal market, which has been hovering close to 1,000 pesos per dollar for a week. The parallel market is the street thermometer of the Argentine economy: when politics shakes, the few Argentines who can save take their pesos from the bank and buy dollars on the street. As the price of the illegal dollar increases, the prices of other products also increase. And this election year has been long. The official dollar has doubled in price since January, when it cost 185 pesos, but the illegal dollar has tripled it. Milei has promised to dollarize the economy to end inflation and has made no secret of his desire to see the price of the dollar rise to its maximum before his possible government.
A discussion was moved to the right
Argentina’s constitution prohibits replacing the peso as the official currency, but the country has been discussing Milei’s proposal to dollarize the economy for months. The Ultra have managed to get the country to debate for months about the free carrying of guns, reopening the debate on legal abortion, and even the viability of a hypothetical organ market. Milei’s theatrics have set the agenda, but his program has taken over the election debate over budget adjustments, abolishing state offices, public cuts in funding for education, health and scientific research, or even carrying arms.
Argentine pesos equivalent to one thousand dollars as of September 26, 2023. Erica Canepa (Bloomberg)
Milei and Peronism were chosen as opponents in the face of a second round, but the person most damaged by the rise of the Ultra is the traditional right. At the start of the year there was little doubt about the Together for Change alliance: the return of the center-right coalition to the Casa Rosada, which ended 15 years of Peronism in 2015, seemed a formality while the current government was on ice lay through the crisis. The presidential candidate was Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, the uncharismatic but idiosyncratic mayor of Buenos Aires, who had succeeded Macri in the position in 2015 and hoped to do so again as his party’s candidate.
The feeling of assured victory in his coalition gave Larreta a boost to his competitors. And the rise of Milei, who seduced the disillusioned electorate by putting both Peronism and Together for Change in the same “political caste” pocket, stole voters from the right. Larreta, a centrist, open to dialogue and with the propaganda machine of the city of Buenos Aires under his control, went from being a favorite to losing his party’s election to Patricia Bullrich, losing the support of Macri and winning just under 12% of the vote. Votes in August. Bullrich won by adopting some of Milei’s approaches and again raised the slogan to “bury” Peronism. Milei treated her as her “second mark” and this Sunday it remains to be seen whether she will manage to sit between the two favorites. He’s uphill.
A choice between thirds
Since Raúl Alfonsín and the Radical Party introduced democracy in 1983, ending military dictatorship, Argentine elections have been dominated by two forces: Peronism versus radicalism in all its forms, alliances, and the alliance that ultimately swallowed it. in 2015. The picture changed somewhat after the 1995 elections, when a constitutional reform shortened the presidential term to four years and allowed re-election. Since then, third forces have emerged, but none of them have come to challenge the dominant parties for power.
Javier Milei also broke this paradigm. In the months leading up to the primaries, almost all polls predicted that the party would maintain its role as the third remaining force, but in the end it prevailed. Its 29.08% was a narrow victory compared to Together for Change’s 28% and Peronism’s 27.2%. But it seemed like a victory because it had succeeded in displacing the center-right party, which swallowed up radicalism and left Peronism in a historic third place in the sum total of all lists. The polls are now predicting a second round between Javier Milei and Sergio Massa, but their previous mistakes and the close result of the primaries leave the plot open.
Unknown due to absences
Voter turnout in the August 13 primary was 69.6%, one of the lowest records in presidential elections since 1983. Voting is compulsory in Argentina, but the electorate’s disillusionment is also reflected in abstention: barely more than seven million people voted in favor voted Milei in August, but more than ten million chose not to vote. Argentina has participated in primaries since the 2011 elections. This year there was little difference between turnout in the primary and general elections, but in the 2015 and 2019 elections, nearly 5% more voters mobilized in the final election.
Voters at a polling station in Tigre, in the first round of voting on August 13th. MARIANA NEDELCU (Portal)
Buenos Aires, two bastions at stake
This Sunday, Argentines will also elect the mayor of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires and the governor of the surrounding province. 44% of the 35 million Argentines eligible to vote live between these two border lines: 13 million vote in the province of Buenos Aires, a historic bastion of Peronism, and 2.5 million do so in the capital, which has dominated the former president’s party for 16 years ( and former mayor) Mauricio Macri. Both are the strength of the parties that control them.
The fight between Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Mauricio Macri was also held in the city. Macri, who had chosen Larreta as his successor as mayor, did not let his dolphin do the same and installed his cousin as his successor. The controversy escalated beyond nepotism. Jorge Macri, the mayor on leave of a wealthy municipality in the province of Buenos Aires, did not meet one basic requirement for governing the city: living in it. The city’s constitution requires candidates to live in Buenos Aires for at least five years before the election, but Macri’s cousin was allowed in because a court considered the years he had lived in the capital in his youth to be equivalent. The court’s interpretation of the required “priority” sparked controversy, but Macri remains the favorite. There will only be a second round if it does not get an absolute majority, but even with that the government seems secure: Sunday’s polls show it receiving up to 47% of the vote, almost 20 points ahead of Peronism.
The province of Buenos Aires, on the other hand, will have an elected governor regardless of the result this Sunday. Historical bastion of Peronism since the return of democracy with a single interruption between 2015 and 2019. Buenos Aires residents voted faithfully in the August primaries. He won the presidential election with 32%, but incumbent governor Axel Kicillof received 36% of the vote. What does that mean? That even some voters who decided not to vote for Peronism in the presidential election decided to support the current governor in the provincial primaries. Kicillof, former Economy Minister to Cristina Kirchner and one of the young faces of a Peronism that needs to be renewed, is one of the favorites in the polls for this Sunday, with 35% of the vote. The election is all or nothing and we will have to see what the opposition is between the Together for Change voter and Milei’s La Libertad Avanza party, which together are over 50%. Whatever the national outcome, a provincial victory will be very important for Peronism: either to ensure some ability to govern or to regroup and resist for the next five years.