With Congress paralysed by a government eagerly looking forward to greater strength in its next version and with its new members being confirmed and swearing their increasingly varied oaths between yesterday (the senators) and next Wednesday (the deputies), today’s penultimate column will take a final look at inland midterm voting before closure next week with a preview of the new Congress.
Firstly, a quick reminder of the big picture – La Libertad Avanza (LLA) won in 15 of the 23 provinces, including the largest with Tucumán the most important outside the fold (Catamarca, Corrientes, Formosa, La Pampa, La Rioja, San Juan and Santa Cruz were the others). Opposition candidates only enjoyed a clear lead in half their provinces won (Catamarca, Formosa, San Juan and Tucumán) although LLA margins were extremely slender in four of their 15 victories, including the main prize of Buenos Aires Province (Chaco, Chubut and Río Negro were the others while falling behind in the senatorial voting in the latter.)
Since Buenos Aires City and Province along with Santiago del Estero were studied in previous columns, today will be limited to the remainder, always giving the final official results. Chubut, Formosa and La Rioja will also receive no further mention because with only two deputies at stake, no result other than one seat each for LLA and Peronism was possible, short of one more than doubling the other (something not even eight-term Formosa Peronist Governor Gildo Insfrán could achieve). Of the remaining 18 provinces, priority will be given to the seven with seven-digit electorates (Chaco, Córdoba, Entre Ríos, Mendoza, Salta, Santa Fe and Tucumán) accounting for 39 of the 70 seats at stake in these provinces with hopefully some space left for the other 11.
Córdoba is the most populous inland province with just over three million voters although curiously it has one less deputy than Santa Fe. The final official results after recounts showed that in a turnout of under 65 percent (1,953,503 votes cast), LLA headed by Gonzalo Roca won clearly with 829,022 votes (42.43 percent) and five seats as against 555,845 (28.45 percent) for ex-governor Juan Schiaretti’s Provincias Unidas with three deputies while the remaining seat was held by incumbent deputy Natalia de la Sota of Defendamos Córdoba with 170,837 votes (8.74 percent) – Schiaretti thus cannot argue that he would have won without the latter splitting non-Kirchnerite Peronism. The two main traditional forces, the UCR Radicals (who ruled Córdoba into this century) and national Peronism, trailed badly with 99,323 votes (five percent) for the Kirchnerite Fuerza Patria and 62,863 (under three percent) for the UCR, their worst election ever. These numbers leave just over 12 percent of the vote to be divided among the 13 other lists.
Over a million out of a Santa Fe electorate numbering 2,815,453 did not bother to vote – of the 1,807,816 (62.77 percent) who did, 684,533 voted to award LLA five seats, 483,403 to elect three Fuerza Patria deputies and 308,470 to give the remaining two seats to Provincias Unidas, thus making Santa Fe Radical Governor Maximiliano Pullaro contributing his lieutenant-governor Gisela Scaglia to the latter a bigger loser than Schiaretti. Comparing the two heavyweight provinces, LLA notched three percent less than in Córdoba and Provincias Unidas fully 10 percent less due to a far more forceful performance by Fuerza Patria – solid in Rosario, where LLA nevertheless won comfortably as it did in the provincial capital and 16 of the 19 departments. Only three of the other 13 lists even topped one percent (two of them representing a left splintered into four fragments) with barely a quarter million votes between them all – blank or spoiled ballots clinched 4th place with 86,918.
Next comes Mendoza, one of just three provinces where President Javier Milei nailed an absolute majority of the vote – of the 1,067,366 votes cast (a relatively high turnout of 68.65 percent), Alianza La Libertad Avanza + Cambia Mendoza in alliance with the Radical provincial government won 542,943 (53.7 percent) and four of the five deputies headed by outgoing Defence Minister Luis Petri with the other seat going to the Peronist Fuerza Justicialista Mendoza (dodging the Fuerza Patria label) with less than half the winning vote – 254,447 votes or 25.2 percent. Also-rans among the six other lists included the Frente Verde greens with 80,597 votes (7.98 percent), the far right splinter Frente Libertario Demócrata with 54,455 votes (5.39 percent), the leftist Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores Unidad with 34,605 votes (3.44 percent) and Provincias Unidas with 29,120 votes (2.88 percent) – all of them ahead of the blank vote.
Tucumán, by way of contrast, was one of just three provinces where the national opposition secured an absolute majority. An exceptionally high turnout of 79.2 percent ensured that not only was the electorate seven-digit (1,347,742) but also the total votes (1,067,510) – of these the testimonial candidacy of Peronist Governor Osvaldo Jaldo heading the Frente Tucumán Primero in person won 526,429 votes as against 365,024 for La Libertad Avanza but this significant difference did not yield a high enough third quotient to prevent each ending up with two deputies. The Radical Roberto Sánchez (Unidos por Tucumán) claimed third place with 84,085 votes but no seat, the controversial rightist Ricardo Bussi of Fuerza Republicana had his worst election ever with 22,600 votes while the other five lists (four of them leftist) barely topped 40,000 votes between them.
The other three provinces with seven-digit electorates all elected senators as well – Salta, Entre Ríos and Chaco (all won by the Milei government, thus sending five LLA militants and a Radical ally in Chaco to the upper house while the minority senators will be former three-term Chaco Peronist governor Jorge Capitanich, former Energy secretary Flavia Royón close to Salta Governor Gustavo Sáenz and Adán Bahl for Fuerza Patria in Entre Ríos).
In Salta the voting for the three main parties (out of a total 17 lists) at the two levels was 284,809 (senatorial) and 245,050 votes for LLA, 214,854 and 194,619 votes for Primero los Salteños (Sáenz) and 78,783 and 94,691 votes for Fuerza Patria in a turnout of 66.3 percent. In Entre Ríos the only parties which mattered were those sending candidates to Congress – Alianza La Libertad Avanza with two senators (402,046 votes) and three deputies (377,741) while Fuerza Entre Ríos elected Bahl (273,753 votes) and two Peronist deputies (245,691 votes). Outgoing Kirchnerite deputy Carolina Gaillard scraped barely three percent with four other lists (three of them leftist) trailing her. Turnout was 70.5 percent (819,562 votes out of an electorate of 1,155,481). In Chaco the voting was highly polarised and very close – the final count had LLA edging Capitanich by 291,956 votes (44.1 percent) to 288,509 (43.6 percent) at senatorial level while the two sides elected two deputies each from respective votes of 266,189 (40.2 percent) and 255,876 (38.6 percent). Eight other lists barely cleared eight percent of the vote between them.
The other three provinces electing senators were all Patagonian – Neuquén (two for Milei and the other for Governor Rolando Figueroa), Río Negro (a perhaps not so surprising loss to Fuerza Patria, given the controversial LLA candidacy of Lorena Villaverde) and Tierra del Fuego (a surprising win for LLA with Kirchnerite Cándida López holding her seat). Space is running out for the somewhat complex voting for the eight deputies of these three provinces (with the combined vote of the two leading lists only reaching even 61 percent in Tierra del Fuego) and also for the eight provinces yet to cover, each electing three deputies – Catamarca, Corrientes, Jujuy, La Pampa, Misiones, San Juan, San Luis and Santa Cruz. Perhaps room for a small box in next week’s final column to herald the new Congress.
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