President Javier Milei’s government’s stunning defeat in the Buenos Aires Province midterms a fortnight ago is widely seen as the beginning of the end but who knows whether, in hindsight, it might not have proved a lifeline? Had La Libertad Avanza (LLA) followed up last May’s triumph in the nation’s capital with a minimally acceptable result in the country’s most important province, the “purple or nothing” strategy might have received an irrefutable endorsement inducing the Javier Milei presidency to walk straight into a nasty shock in next month’s national midterms.
The defeat could thus prove a blessing in disguise but only if lessons are learned – more than last Monday’s tame budget presentation will be required to turn the tide. Nevertheless, there is a margin for combining inflexibility with adjustment by stealth via saying one thing and doing another, which can work both ways – one example would be President Milei reassuring the markets that he would not be budging “a millimetre” in his economic policies in his election day speech, only to peg down interest rates five percent the next day.
If Rudyard Kipling judged both triumph and disaster to be imposters, one electoral paradox this year might back his point – Milei actually polled a higher percentage (33.7 percent) in Buenos Aires Province this month than in BA City last May (30.1 percent) and yet the former is unanimously deemed an unmitigated disaster while the latter was a resounding triumph. Indeed, that Buenos Aires Province LLA percentage was higher than in any of the eight local elections so far this year except Chaco (45.6 percent), which most media and pundits have been brainwashed into cataloguing as a libertarian triumph but the winning list was actually named “Chaco Puede + La Libertad Avanza” with the LLA merely an adjunct to the locally governing Radicals who drew most of the votes.
Everything is relative but the Buenos Aires Province result remains a categorical disaster which does not bode well for next month – if Milei averaged 21 percent in the eight rounds of local voting before this month (even when erroneously defining the Chaco vote as 100 percent libertarian), Buenos Aires Province would take that average up to around 28 percent, falling around 10 percentage points short of what would be needed to command the third of the deputies required to prevent his presidential decrees from being overridden (with rule by decree being undermined as this column was being written by the Congress bill obliging emergency decrees to obtain a majority in both houses within 90 days to stand).
The Buenos Aires Province result has turned the campaign on its head with the sands shifting faster as from last Monday with a conciliatory Milei presenting his 2026 Budget as 85 percent social, while Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof abruptly ended his boycott of the mainstream media, apparently groping towards presenting himself as some kind of middle ground between Milei and Cristina. Suddenly moderation is in fashion and austerity totally out – this column will try to follow these shifting sands in the four weekends between now and the midterms but the rest of today’s space will be dedicated to details of that pivotal Buenos Aires Province vote a fortnight ago which could not be shoehorned last Saturday.
Before analysing how the province’s citizens voted on September 7, it is perhaps more important to look at those not voting. If Kicillof only marginally improved his percentage to 47 from 45 percent in the 2023 general elections, the PRO-LLA merger added up two quarters from the 2023 vote to come up with a third instead of a half – in absolute numbers, adding the 2.54 million Juntos por el Cambio votes of 2023 to the 2.35 million libertarian votes back then yielded 2.58 million this month or just 35,000 votes more than for Patricia Bullrich alone.
This has led to a lively debate as to who was letting the side down – PRO or the LLA core from the three 2023 rounds. The former was widely suspected as being more allergic to corruption scandals, cultural battles and foul language yet the supposedly hard core is also more volatile and could be reacting to the recessive trends already starting since the second quarter of this year – in many ways the answer here also answers the question of whether the causes of Milei’s comeuppance were more political or economic. Yet perhaps the desertion was not so much a matter of party as class, especially the lower middle class accounting for around a quarter of the population which starts running out of money after three weeks (as opposed to a fortnight in the segments below them) but does not identify with Peronism – this category extends to the centre-right and libertarian alike.
The final results of the Buenos Aires Province midterms should be completed next week although they may not be available for next weekend (the following column if not). The next level of detail is the eight electoral sections. Fuerza Patria won six although their vote was 40 percent or less in half of them (the inland Second, Fourth and Seventh Sections where strong third-party performances helped them to victory). Alianza La Libertad Avanza (ALLA) won in the southern and coastal Fifth and Sixth Sections (centred on Mar del Plata and Bahía Blanca respectively) with just over 41 percent in both – flood-stricken Bahía Blanca was the surprise here rather than Mar del Plata.
The election was actually to pick senators (23) and deputies (46) although virtually all the attention was lavished on the percentages. The senators were elected in the First (northern Greater Buenos Aires), Fourth (the north-western province), Fifth and Seventh (central) Sections and the deputies in the other four. Fuerza Patria won five of the eight senate seats in the First, three of the seven in the Fourth, two of the five in the Fifth and all three in the Seventh (due to no other party reaching a third) for a total of 13 – ALLA won three seats each in the First and Fifth and two in the Fourth for a total of eight while Somos picked up two seats in the Fourth thanks largely to the Junín vote.
Unlike in senatorial voting, Fuerza Patria fell short of an overall majority of deputies with 21 of the 46 (four in the Second, 10 in the Third, four in the Sixth and three in the Eighth), ALLA won 18 seats (four in the Second, six in the Third, five in the Sixth and three in the Eighth) with two FIT leftists (Third), two for Somos (Sixth) and three for Hechos (Second, mostly San Nicolás). The complete results will be accompanied by more details.
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