Today’s column can make at least one claim to being unique on the strength of being in all probability the only writing on the subject to make a conscientious and even exaggerated effort to respect the ‘veda’ electoral curfew preceding tomorrow’s midterm elections in this city to fill the 30 seats falling vacant in the local Legislature.
Such abstention is not merely dictated by ethical scruples or legalistic logic. Electoral tides notoriously shift in the final week and even the last minute. It is the personal experience of this columnist (who can only vote precisely in local elections like tomorrow’s) to have changed his mind in the ballot-box more than once, on one occasion even walking to the precinct wearing a shirt of a certain colour to underline determination to vote a certain way, only to decide otherwise once inside the polling-booth on tactical grounds. Other examples of similar last-minute U-turns are also known to this scribe from the confessions of in-laws and other acquaintances. A reluctance to call tomorrow’s election thus stems from a prudent avoidance of a hiding to nothing as much as respect for a veda which has become a dead letter.
Instead of tomorrow’s bellwether election (which stands to be the exclusive subject next Saturday), today’s column will focus on last Sunday’s midterm voting in four provinces – Chaco, Jujuy, Salta and San Luis in alphabetical order. In all four cases the provincial governors ended up on top of fragmented voting thanks to the suspension of the PASO primaries but some further details are pertinent to place the results in perspective.
The 16 seats in the Chaco provincial legislature were disputed by 11 lists, of which four failed even to reach one percent and will thus be ignored. The clear frontrunner was Radical Governor Leandro Zdero’s Chaco Puede list (backed by La Libertad Avanza) with 45.2 percent of the vote and half the 16 seats. The Peronist opposition was divided between two lists – Frente Chaco Merece Más responding to previous three-term governor Jorge Capitanich with 33.6 percent of the vote and six seats and Frente Primero Chaco backed by several Peronist mayors with 11.5 percent and the other two deputies. The also-rans topping one percent without winning a seat were Bases para la Libertad (descended from the provincial party Acción Chaqueña which governed Chaco between 1991 and 1995) and Nuevo Espacio Chaco Independiente (a Radical splinter) with 2.06 percent each, the leftist Partido del Obrero (1.8 percent) and Ahora Vos Chaco (for libertarians unable to stomach alliance with Radicals) on 1.67 percent.
Both the national and provincial governments celebrated a result which was less clear-cut than it seems. The forecasts centred on whether Zdero would be adding one or two deputies – remaining stuck on eight would indicate that adding the libertarian vote (while explicitly excluding PRO from the Chaco Puede coalition) brought nothing to the table. The mathematical result was a dead heat between the 45.2 percent for the government list and 45.1 percent for the main opposition when combining the two Peronist lists. The latter would almost certainly have outvoted the Radical-libertarian combo if over 10 inches of rainfall had not descended on Chaco last weekend, a factor notoriously affecting turnout (which was under 52 percent overall) in low-income neighbourhoods.
In Jujuy 13 lists were competing for 24 provincial legislative seats but a five percent threshold meant that all but four ended up empty-handed. Jujuy Crece responding to Radical Governor Carlos Sadir was the winner with 38 percent of the vote (to hold 12 of their 18 seats at stake) while La Libertad Avanza was runner-up with almost 21 percent and seven seats, relegating the Frente Justicialista to third place with just under 11 percent and retaining half of their previous six seats. The Frente de Izquierda polled fourth with 8.6 percent, adding two more seats for a total of five. These successful parties accounted for almost 80 percent of the vote with the remainder divided among nine lists (including the Somos Más of dissident Peronist senator Carolina Moises, two libertarian splinters, two leftist splinters and the rest independent outsiders). Turnout was almost two-thirds of the electorate. Despite dropping half a dozen seats, the Radicals still have a comfortable majority of 31 of the 48 provincial deputies.
As in Chaco the triumphs of the national and provincial governments were more apparent than real. The libertarians soared to seven seats from nowhere in 2021 but failed to replace the Peronists (still with nine seats in total) as the official opposition while their vote was little over half of Javier Milei’s 37 percent in 2013 and barely more than a third of his 58 percent runoff. The ruling Radicals (whose allies include PRO) nevertheless lost considerable ground to them although if they have to deal with libertarians at national level, they might as well at provincial. All scant consolation for Peronism under the disastrous Partido Justicialista trusteeship of Aníbal Fernández in a province they ruled from 1983 to 2015.
In Salta the apparent landslide of the ruling coalition under formerly Renewal Peronist Governor Gustavo Sáenz (11 of the 12 senators at stake and 20 of the 30 provincial deputies) was misleading since he finished five percent behind the libertarians in the provincial capital (around 41 percent of Salta’s electorate). The provincial and national ruling forces monopolised all the legislative seats since La Libertad Avanza claimed nine of the opposition seats (six in the provincial capital) with the Salta Libre libertarian splinter taking the other – all three of the more traditional parties (Peronists, Radicals and PRO) struck out completely with the former Juntos por el Cambio not helping their cause by running two rival lists, Cambiemos Salta for PRO and Frente Juntos for the Radicals. A total of 16 lists competed although only nine throughout the province – to the five mentioned above could be added the FIT leftists, the Frente Vamos Salta! closely allied to Sáenz under former Energy and Mining secretary Flavia Royón, a libertarian splinter and an independent list. Turnout was around 59 percent with the electronic voting system (since 2009) permitting almost complete results in 90 minutes.
Unlike tomorrow’s highly nationalised City election here, San Luis was a purely local and even fraternal tussle for power between current Governor Claudio Poggi and his four-term predecessor Alberto Rodríguez Saá (Frente Justicialista) with the latter’s brother, five-term governor Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, backing Poggi’s Ahora San Luis list. It was won hands down by Poggi with 47 percent of the vote, all four Senate seats and 12 of the 22 deputies up for renewal as against 26 percent and eight seats for his predecessor. San Luis was the only province voting last Sunday with the libertarian challenge in disarray, split into two lists – Tercera Posición (finishing third, appropriately enough, with almost eight percent and the two remaining seats) and Viva la libertad carajo! (7.1 percent), neither obtaining national endorsement. PRO has merged into the coalition of Poggi, who won San Luis in 2023 under the Juntos por el Cambio label. Nine other lists shared the remaining 12 percent of the vote, headed by the Kirchnerite Frente por la Justicia Social with a mere 1.8 percent, followed by the FIT leftists, the also Kirchnerite Frente Primero San Luis with trade union backing, the Proyecto Clase Media upholding bourgeois values, the San Luis Futuro student party, the MAS Trotskyites and three other odds and ends.
Next Saturday we will be coming home with a full analysis of tomorrow’s election here on the basis of final results.
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