Trump card or joker in the pack?

Washington assistance contingent on midterm success adds the latest uncertainty to next weekend’s electoral showdown, threatening to be a vicious circle amid opinion polls generally trending downwards, but not over until it is over. Donald Trump may have fired an arrow into Javier Milei’s eye on the 959th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings last Tuesday when he informed him that he had neither time nor money for losers but nothing like a comparison with the pre-electoral expectations of the last decade to underwrite “no such uncertainty as a sure thing” (Robert Burns dixit).

Perhaps the uncertainty is greater now than in the previous elections – while the outlook is generally negative, the probabilities of Milei not winning look greater than for his actually losing.  As it happens, the midterms of the last decade resulted much closer to the expectations (with Mauricio Macri tipped to cash in on his one growth year of 2017 while Alberto Fernández faced punishment in late 2021 for a pandemic lockdown outstaying its welcome far too long) than the general elections.

Running through these, in 2015 Daniel Scioli (then the Peronist standard-bearer but now in Milei’s Cabinet) was the virtual president-elect for almost three months after coming within 1.3 percent of a winning vote in the PASO primaries but the next president turned out to be Macri. Following his midterm success when ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner could not even win a senatorial race, Macri was supposed to be at least even odds for re-election in 2019 but lost the PASO primaries to an improbable Kirchnerite comeback by 15 percentage points. Then-City mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta was another virtual president-elect for almost 90 percent of the time between the 2021 midterms and the 2023 PASO primaries and yet the President today is Milei. On this basis it is perhaps less important to guess correctly the results of these midterms than to try and work out how they could misguide us for the 2027 presidential elections.

The many negative headlines in recent days (at least as far as the electoral outcome is concerned) include highlighting that the government is confident of success in only seven of the 24 districts but this fails to point out that fears of defeat are also only limited to seven provinces with the other 10 up in the air. Seven might even be stretching it when it comes to purple provinces because only four districts (this City, Chaco, Entre Ríos and Mendoza) can be considered safely in the bag due to the integration between their local governments and the La Libertad Avanza lists – in the cases of Salta and Tierra del Fuego government optimism is based on serious divisions in the Peronist camp rather than libertarian strength, while it is not clear why Casa Rosada strategists also include Río Negro in their list. No less than six of these seven districts (Mendoza the only exception) will also be electing senators, which may be considered good news for Milei.

As for the seven provinces triggering the most pessimism, again only four correspond to the strength of the main opposition – Buenos Aires Province, Formosa, La Pampa and Santiago del Estero, all with Kirchnerite provincial governments. In the other three (Chubut, Corrientes and San Juan, ruled by three different parties which are all ex-members of the extinct Juntos por el Cambio coalition) the problem is the provincial government rather than Peronism although the libertarians are squeezed into third place in all three.

La Libertad Avanza (LLA) and Peronism are running in every district but an LLA backed by allies and Fuerza Patria are each limited to 14. Karina Milei’s “purple or nothing” strategy has imposed itself on the major provinces of Córdoba and Santa Fe as well as Catamarca, Chubut, Jujuy, La Rioja, Neuquén, San Juan, Santiago del Estero and Santa Cruz. Fuerza Patria is replaced by other variants of Peronism in Chubut, Entre Ríos, Formosa, La Pampa, La Rioja, Mendoza, San Juan, San Luis, Santa Cruz and Tucumán while alternative versions are also rivals in some of the provinces where Fuerza Patria is running. The only other contender, Provincias Unidas, is actually running in more districts than Fuerza Patria – a total of 16 with Entre Ríos, Formosa, La Pampa, Misiones, Neuquén, Río Negro, Salta and Tucumán missing from their list.

Where the LLA has condescended to ally with others, there is no guarantee of success among floating voters with other third way alternatives available. The only two provinces allied to the Radicals (Chaco and Mendoza) are looking good but the same cannot be said for the eight lists incorporating PRO, of which only three (this City, Entre Ríos and Río Negro) are earmarked for success with three others facing defeat, including Buenos Aires Province. Nor is Peronist unity a guarantee of success on the other side – in five of the seven districts where the LLA fancies its chances, Peronism is running undivided (the exceptions being Salta and Tierra del Fuego among the nine provinces with internal differences).

Most eyes are on the deputies but it is also worth asking whether the recent anti-government swing will save Kirchnerism from the meltdown of their Senate caucus facing them earlier in the year. The government seems to be staying ahead for two of the three seats in this City, Chaco and Entre Ríos while it would have to be a catastrophic election not to pick up the minority senator for Santiago del Estero. Fuerza Patria has huge problems in Salta where they are not only denied the Peronist supporters of local Governor Gustavo Sáenz but have alienated their Kirchnerite base by recruiting former three-term governor Juan Manuel Urtubey of centre-right leanings as their senatorial candidate. The big doubt lies in the three Patagonian provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro and Tierra del Fuego where the ruling provincial parties and the libertarians had been squeezing out the local Peronists – the question is whether the recent downturn has dropped the LLA into third place.

Today’s column will be the last pre-electoral word on the midterms because next Saturday the veda curfew will already be in force. This columnist will not be so rash as to make any forecasts with 10 days still to go when so many last-minute decisions are made in the polling-booth, awaiting the wisdom of hindsight.