By the end of this weekend all the candidates in every list competing in the midterms will have been identified with some of the names already a foregone conclusion, but this column will hold its fire until next Saturday in order to give a complete picture. Which is what we will attempt today for the lists, whose August 7 closure came just after last week’s press time.
In broad terms, President Javier Milei’s La Libertad Avanza (LLA) will be flying solo in half the country whereas Peronism is presenting a united front in three-quarters of the districts, including all the most important except Córdoba. The alliance sealed by LLA with PRO centre-right party in both Buenos Aires City and Province on terms close to unconditional surrender (causing acute tension among the latter) has been replicated in Entre Ríos, Formosa, La Pampa, Misiones, Río Negro, Tierra del Fuego and Tucumán. The libertarians have also reached agreement with the governors of two of the five Radical provinces: Chaco and Mendoza (with Formosa Radicals also on that same page). In San Luis, the supporters of Governor Claudio Poggi are standing down in the national midterms in return for LLA having stayed out of the provincial. Of the dozen provinces where the nationally ruling party is going it alone (Catamarca, Chubut, Córdoba, Corrientes, Jujuy, La Rioja, Neuquén, Salta, San Juan, Santa Cruz, Santa Fe and Santiago del Estero), Milei won the first round of the 2023 presidential elections in seven of them and the run-off everywhere except the last-named.
A Peronism currently down on its luck seems to have decided that disunity is a luxury it can ill afford. Three northern provinces – Jujuy, Misiones and Salta – owe their internal rift to the insistence of the Partido Justicialista chaired by ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner on imposing Kirchnerite trusteeships on more conservative local branches who have drawn up their own lists. Córdoba was always too heavyweight a province to subject to similar treatment where local Peronism is nevertheless running divided – the difference between two like-minded strands is whether their loyalties are to current and previous governors Martín Llaryora and Juan Schiaretti or to their predecessor, the late José Manuel de la Sota, whose daughter Natalia is heading the list. Kirchnerites are presenting a third list. The only other places where Peronism cannot count on all its hard core are the Patagonian provinces of Chubut and Tierra del Fuego where the Fuerza del Trabajo Chubutense and the Movimiento Popular Fuegino are also respectively fishing for Peronist votes. Otherwise Santiago del Estero (the only province voting at every level on October 26 – gubernatorial, senatorial, provincial and municipal as well as for Congress) has an entirely artificial division between the Civic Front of Governor Gerardo Zamora and a Peronist list in a bid to bag all three senators.
A fortnight ago this column took a detailed look at the senatorial races in eight districts but the criterion of the solidity of the two main fronts can now be added. Only in Neuquén, Salta and Santiago del Estero is LLA running alone while there is more than one Peronist list in Salta and Tierra del Fuego (if we ignore Santiago del Estero’s pseudo-division).
The federal alliance to champion the inland productive sector formed last month by the provinces of Chubut, Córdoba, Jujuy, Santa Cruz and Santa Fe – the main subject of last week’s column when it still called itself Grito Federal – has since adopted the formal designation of Provincias Unidas. Their main bid will be in their two heavyweights, Córdoba and Santa Fe, while in their other provinces (including San Juan where they are now also formally registered) the tendency is to team up with other parties outside the main polarisation between the libertarians and Kirchnerism. A party in this capital cannot be federalist by definition but the mostly Radical Ciudadanos Unidos – with outgoing Senator Martín Lousteau (who chairs the UCR) and outgoing deputy Facundo Manes bidding to switch houses of Congress – are presenting an allied version of the third way.
Several other lists registered before the August 7 deadline but perhaps best to wait and see with what names and faces they come attached this weekend before deciding whether they are of interest or not.
Just a fortnight to go before back-to-back provincial elections – Corrientes (including gubernatorial like Santiago del Estero) on August 31 and Buenos Aires Province on September 7, the big one. Which still has no clear winner – and nor is it merely a question of whether voters attach more importance to taming inflation or the struggle to reach the end of the month. Neither side seems to have conclusively decided whether their best bet is to nationalise the Buenos Aires Province “mother of all battles” or to keep it local. That “Kirchnerismo nunca más” (tasteless in many eyes) banner with which President Milei launched the libertarian campaign on the day list registration closed would seem to indicate a global rather than merely local rejection of Kirchnerism, whereas the Axel Kicillof provincial government seems bent on turning it into a plebiscite against national austerity in order to bury local deficiencies as an issue. Yet leaked documents are urging Milei’s candidates not to fall into the plebiscite trap and keep the issues strictly provincial, which runs counter to opinion polls showing two-thirds of the province’s voters to prioritise the national situation. This relative indifference to such provincial problems as crime and education leads some Peronist strategists to ponder that rejection of Kirchnerism could exceed any limitations on Milei’s popularity in a nationalised election, thus making a more local approach based on the Greater Buenos Aires Peronist mayors mostly backing Kicillof less dangerous after all.
Quite apart from voter preferences, turnout looms as a major factor with around 40 percent and perhaps even half the electorate expected to sit this one out. But the jury is still out on which side stands most to gain – the national government dreads that machine politics will churn out a Peronist victory if independent voters remain indifferent while the provincial government fears that voter apathy would favour Milei since the hard core of libertarian support of almost a third of the electorate outweighs a Kirchnerite hard core struggling to be a quarter.
Next Saturday’s column will catch up with the candidates nominated this weekend and (with the last weekend of this month earmarked for Corrientes) a final preview of Buenos Aires Province before the eve of voting, space permitting and barring any more urgent news.
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