Argentina's Congress backs Milei’s bid to suspend primary vote

Argentina’s lower house of Congress voted to suspend a primary election for this year’s midterm vote, building on momentum for President Javier Milei’s party to boost its presence in the legislature. 

The chamber voted 162-55 in favour of suspending the primary, known in Spanish as the PASO, on Thursday and the measure now goes to the Senate for consideration. Two dozen lawmakers abstained from voting.  

By eliminating it before the midterms, Milei would gain more time to benefit politically from Argentina’s economic recovery. It would also push a deadline to define his list of candidates into the second half of the year, giving him more runway to recruit lawmakers from a rival coalition to run under his libertarian party’s banner.  

“Not having primaries benefits the parties with strong leaderships,” says Marcelo J. García, director for the Americas for the New York-based Horizon Engage, a political risk consultancy firm. “The ruling La Libertad Avanza is strongly commanded by President Milei and his sister Karina Milei, who will write the list of candidates in every province. No opposition party enjoys that.”

Milei has enjoyed a growing list of victories in recent months. His historic austerity campaign helped Argentina achieve its first fiscal surplus in more than a decade without significantly denting his approval ratings, which are holding around 47 percent. Monthly inflation, which was running as high as 26 percent when Milei took office at the end of 2023, cooled to 2.7 percent in December. The nation exited recession in the third quarter last year, and Argentines are increasingly optimistic about the future path of their crisis-prone economy.

The president’s party only has eight out of 127 seats in the lower house up for re-election later this year, meaning he can gain a much larger foothold in the legislature to help advance his pro-market agenda. The midterm vote is scheduled for October 26. 

Analysts anticipate senators approving the suspension too even though Milei’s party only holds six of the 72 seats in the upper chamber. That’s because former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who leads the Peronist party that has far more votes in Congress, stands to consolidate power within her ranks too amid infighting. By avoiding a primary, she is set to hold more control over the Peronist list of midterm candidates. 

Argentina’s controversial primary vote, created during Fernández de Kirchner’s presidency in 2009, has become a nightmare for pollsters and parties of all stripes in recent years, often roiling markets. Even though it wasn’t a binding election, every party voted on the same day, effectively creating a nationwide poll a few months before official ballots. 

In 2019, business-friendly former president Mauricio Macri’s re-election bid collapsed when he lost the primary in a landslide, sending Argentina’s bonds and currency into freefall. Two years later, Fernández de Kirchner — who also served as vice -resident in the previous government — blew open a fight within her party after it lost the PASO. And in August 2023, Milei shocked the nation by winning the primary, and his predecessors devalued the peso a day later.  

“This will shorten this year’s electoral campaign, which feeds to Milei’s anti-political establishment narrative,” added García. “He will also boast that it reduces government spending.”