This was going to be the last column in this series on the assumption that with the deputies swearing in last Wednesday (and the senators already installed five days previously), everything would be in place in the new Congress and end of story. But quite apart from the uncertainties over Lorena Villaverde’s Senate entry (affecting both houses since she is a sitting deputy), Congress has been the scene of musical chairs with its first minority changing in the course of this week while provincial deputies and a Cambiemos revisited jockey for third place. In this state of flux there is no point in attempting to finalise a detailed party breakdown of Congress – this will be postponed for at least one week.
While there is not yet any absolute certainty as to the party labels of the senators and deputies, we at least know all their names now they have sworn in and Villaverde has finally pulled out (while it was the Peronists who first objected to her alleged narco links, her real nemesis might well be Patricia Bullrich – the first government figure to question José Luis Espert over similar links, being ultra-sensitive to any whiff of drug-trafficking after almost two years in the Security Ministry).
So let us look at those names and see how many of them trigger any recognition, starting with the elected senators. Of the 24, 21 are new boys or girls on the block because three – Buenos Aires City’s Mariano Recalde, Tierra del Fuego’s Cándida López and Santiago del Estero’s José Neder, all Peronist – were re-elected so they have a track record by definition, if nothing very distinguished.
Bullrich is, of course, a household name – quite apart from being a hands-on Security minister and major party presidential candidate in recent years, her first term in Congress was back in 1989 and she has been in Cabinets since the start of the century. Santiago del Estero’s Gerardo Zamora and Chaco Peronist Jorge Capitanich are genuine heavyweights, having governed their provinces for four and three terms respectively. And here we are already starting to run thin. Río Negro’s Martín Soria was Justice minister for the last two years of the Frente de Todos administration; Salta’s Flavia Royón was Energy and Mining secretary even more briefly; Silvana Schneider reached the Senate from the non-job of Chaco lieutenant-governor and Adán Bahl was the Peronist who lost the 2023 Entre Ríos gubernatorial race to Rogelio Frigerio.
This list means that over half the new names are media blanks. They could be unrecognised geniuses, opportunists, party hacks, sycophants or a multitude of sins and we have no way of knowing until they leave their mark (which most fail to do).
Next is the turn of the deputies but since this series will continue next week, we will leave them until then and instead use the remaining space to complete the analysis of inland voting from the last two columns.
Disunited provinces III
The previous two columns on inland voting left out seven provinces while not completing coverage of Patagonia (only the Senate seats need no further mention). From north to south, a few lines on each of the seven to fill out the map with the final official results in all cases.
Jujuy. In this northernmost, lithium-rich province La Libertad Avanza (LLA) thrashed the local Unión Cívica Radical government, winning two seats (152,438 votes) with the third deputy for Provincias Unidas (81,825 votes). Peronism would have won a seat if it had not divided its forces between a Kirchnerite Fuerza Patria heeding a national trusteeship (63,433 votes) and a more centrist and local Frente Primero Jujuy Avanza (61,777 votes). FIT leftist deputy Alejandro Vilca lost his seat with 40,300 votes or less than 10 percent of a total vote of 426,235 (a turnout of 70.4 percent) when he had topped a quarter in 2021.
Catamarca. Here the local Peronist government won two seats for Fuerza Patria (100,961 votes), comfortably ahead of LLA returning the third deputy (74,423 votes) for almost 80 percent of the vote but around half of the total electorate of 347,282 between them. Of the other 11 lists, eight topped one percent between 1.15 percent for the FIT leftists and 8.45 percent for Provincias Unidas but not really worth further detail.
Misiones. The only seven-digit electorate in today’s group (1,006,564 citizens qualified to vote, of whom 627,697 or a low 62.36 percent voted), this was one of the most impressive libertarian triumphs with a political novice, the former tennis player Diego Hartfield, soundly defeating an entrenched provincial government. LLA clinched two of the three deputies (224,287 votes) with the third seat for ex-governor Oscar Herrera Auad of the locally governing Frente Renovador de la Concordia (181,848 votes) while Fuerza Patria trailed badly with a single-digit percentage (56,807 votes). Even worse fared the UCR Radicals in 5th place with 3.65 percent and former two-term Peronist governor Ramón Puerta (president for two days in late 2001) in 8th place with 1.5 percent out of a total of 11 lists.
Corrientes. Provincias Unidas won its only triumph here in a tight race with barely five percent separating the three main lists who each won a seat with 94.9 percent of the votes between them – 33.9 percent (185,048 votes) for the Vamos Corrientes list of the Radical provincial government, 32.67 percent (178,294 votes) for LLA and 28.32 percent (154,546 votes) for Fuerza Patria. Turnout was below 60 percent (59.78 percent). Any further detail would be superfluous.
San Juan. This province is a rare case of a Kirchnerite triumph in a province not under their rule (Governor Marcelo Orrego is a lifelong Peronist who nevertheless entered Congress for Juntos por el Cambio in 2019 and ran against Unión por la Patria in 2023). The seats were a three-way split between Fuerza San Juan (147,874 votes), Orrego’s Por San Juan alliance (133, 329 votes) and LLA (111,786 votes). None of the other six lists even reached 7,000 votes out of a total 441,252 ballots cast by an electorate of 625,116 (a solid turnout of 70.6 percent). LLA won in the provincial capital with the Peronists third.
San Luis. One of only three provinces giving LLA an absolute majority due to a unique strategy of the national and provincial governments staying out of each other’s way in provincial and national voting – Karina Milei is given credit for a big midterm win but it could have been a veritable landslide with many more absolute majorities with this strategy. The only province where final official results are not easily available but on election night LLA won two of the three seats with over half the vote with the other deputy coming from former four-term Peronist governor Alberto Rodríguez Saa’s Frente Justicialista with around a third of the vote, way ahead of the Kirchnerite Fuerza Patria with less than seven percent, in turn almost doubling Provincias Unidas.
La Pampa. This central province has been Peronist since 1983 but there were problems maintaining the unbeaten streak in a tight and polarised race last October. Frente Defendemos La Pampa took 90,500 votes (43.22 percent) and Alianza La Libertad Avanza 88,247 (42.15 percent) but the slender difference was enough to give the former two of the three seats with the third libertarian. Only five lists with 8.32 percent for the Radical Cambia La Pampa, just under two percent for FIT leftists and 1.15 percent for Movimiento al Socialismo in a 68.4 percent turnout.
Patagonia (Chubut, Neuquén, Río Negro, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego). Partly covered in previous columns but LLA averaged 33.42 percent between the five provinces, well below their nationwide average of almost 41 percent. This did not prevent them from winning everywhere except in Santa Cruz where they lost out to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s parish priest, Father Juan Carlos Molina by just 775 votes (also in Río Negro senatorial voting thanks to Villaverde). Almost 40 percent of the Patagonian electorate voted for neither of the two main contenders, who nevertheless ended up with 11 of the 12 deputies (six libertarians, five Peronist). Turnout averaged around 70 percent in the region.
Next week the new party breakdown in Congress or maybe even the following week but, unlike the First World War, this will be over by Christmas.
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