Perhaps the most suitable transitional column between this series dedicated to background study and the far more direct campaign coverage starting next week would be to look at midterms but with the former perspective – viewing past performance rather than present progress or future prospects. The most obvious comparison here would be with the United States, which is also into legislative renewal every two years (albeit the entire House of Representatives) – the US Constitution is Argentina’s template in this respect, as in so many others.
Today’s column will thus look at the midterms in both countries since 1985 (not only the year of the junta trials, as enshrined in the Oscar-nominated film of that title, but also of the first midterm elections since Argentina’s return to democracy). Since then there has been a football team of 11 midterms in this country and 10 in the United States – the difference stems from there having been two midterms during the six-year presidential terms here until 1995.
Midterm results have tended to be adverse in both countries from a government standpoint. In the United States, a mere two of those 10 contests have gone the way of the presidential party (doubling to four if only the Senate is considered), Bill Clinton in 1998 and the elder George Bush in 2002 on either side of the millennium being the only incumbents to buck that trend (to whom Donald Trump in 2018 and Joe Biden in 2022 on either side of the pandemic could be added if restricting our gaze to the Senate). Presidential elections have been the other way round with re-election going to all seeking it apart from the elder George W. Bush in 1992 and Trump in 2020 (not that the latter ever recognised this defeat and not that it has stopped him from having a second term now).
In Argentina the margin is narrower with the midterm defeats edging the triumphs by a 6-5 margin. Giving a thumbnail sketch of those 11 contests, 1985 was always going to go in favour of the Radical Raúl Alfonsín with the aforementioned junta trial, the novelty value of democracy and the initial economic success of the Austral Plan against inflation (hardly needing a gratuitous state of siege immediately beforehand). But the gilt was off the gingerbread with a vengeance in the 1987 midterms when amnesty legislation had replaced the junta trial while the wheels were coming off the Austral Plan – the political joke that year was: “What does UCR stand for?” with the answer: “Unicamente Córdoba y Ríonegro” (the only provinces where they won).
If Alfonsín’s first midterm rode the return of democracy, the first two of Peronist president Carlos Menem’s initial term in 1991 and 1993 piggybacked the success of convertibility or dollar-peso parity (an annual inflation of 7.3 percent in 1993) – in the latter year a list headed by former economy minister Antonio Ermán González from remote La Rioja even clinched an extremely rare Peronist triumph in this middle-class capital, never repeated since although it might well recur next month thanks to Karina Milei’s determination to hog the right-of-centre field at PRO’s expense converting the City race into a three-cornered contest.
The next two midterms were influenced by the downside of the convertibility winning the previous couple, although in 1997 the economic situation was not so bad that other factors were not at play – the brand-new Alliance between the Radicals, dissident Peronists and Socialists, formed just two months beforehand, was the most formidable opposition combo until Mauricio Macri´s Juntos por el Cambio in 2015, winning fully half the seats at stake, while there was also a certain voter fatigue over a re-elected Menem´s obsession with sacrificing his second term for a third term which was never on. The 2001 midterm was as much cause as effect of the 2001-2002 meltdown, which began in earnest six weeks later with the ‘corralito’ bank deposit freeze, but the nation was already hopelessly insolvent – the Peronist opposition were technically the victors but spoiled ballots and those not voting at all each accounted for almost a quarter of the electorate as a “begone with them all” mood gripped the country.
Like both Alfonsín and Menem, Kirchnerism won its first midterm but none thereafter. Néstor Kirchner’s target in 2005 was not so much the opposition as his erstwhile mentor, 2002-2003 caretaker president Eduardo Duhalde, in an election centred on their wives duking it out in the Buenos Aires Province senatorial race with victory going to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Although entrenched in government by 2009, Kirchnerism suffered nationwide from its conflict with the farm sector while losing Buenos Aires Province to an Unión-PRO list headed by the political amateur Francisco de Narváez (by a smaller margin than a Peronist splinter, thus prompting a humiliated Néstor Kirchner topping the provincial Peronist slate to launch the PASO primary system now in such disrepute). In 2013, Buenos Aires Province was lost again, this time to Sergio Massa’s Frente Renovador with a more centrist discourse, while inland Fernández de Kirchner’s Frente para la Victoria won in only nine of the 23 provinces. Up against a Mauricio Macri presidency enjoying its single year of growth, Peronism retained nine provinces with the difference that Fernández de Kirchner could only claim four for her ultra-Kirchnerite Unidad Ciudadana breaking away from mainstream Peronism. Despite having since lost the presidency in a crushing 2019 defeat, Macri repeated his 2017 midterm victory in 2021 with 43 percent of the vote against 34.5 percent for the ruling Frente de Todos, who yet again ended up with nine provinces in their column.
Such is the big picture until now but that was then with a drastically different ball game this year. As from next week this column will take a detailed look at the current campaign with a preview of Santa Fe’s constituent assembly elections (plus some local PASO primaries) the following day and a close-up on the 16 lists of City municipal candidates registered last weekend as the main topics.
(This will be the last column under this slug until November. With this City's candidates defined last weekend and Santa Fe voting next weekend, the revival of ‘Campaign Comments’ from 2023 cannot be delayed any longer, already lagging behind many analysts)
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