News of campaign comments

The colour purple

Yesterday 06:10 Despite governing the province for 34 of the last 42 years, the Peronists ran up a hat-trick of national midterm defeats there last Sunday – in 2017, in 2021 and in 2025.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

151 shades of grey

25-10-2025 05:58 Voters are being asked to select not the next president but 127 deputies and 24 senators for which 217 lists are contending in the 23 provinces and this City with a total 1,648 candidates. The multiplicity of combinations arising from these numbers points to an infinity of results, each one of which would make the parliamentary negotiations lying ahead slightly different with no chance of any overall majority – 151 shades of grey.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Trump card or joker in the pack?

18-10-2025 06:15 Milei’s government is confident of success in only seven of Argentina's 24 districts but this fails to point out that fears of defeat are also only limited to seven provinces, with the other 10 up in the air.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

‘Panic Show’ name of the game

11-10-2025 06:00 We are told that the choice is “libertad or kirchnerismo” but neither libertarians nor Kirchnerism will be able to do very much with the 110 of the 257 seats accruing to whoever wins – Argentina’s middle ground has far less seats than Brazil’s "centrão" but could carry equivalent clout.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

A spooky Halloween earlier this month?

04-10-2025 06:38 To lay any claim to a positive result, pundits suggest that Milei would need to be the leading minority with at least 35 percent of the vote. The first objective looks like a done deal since LLA is the only nationwide contender.

by Michael Soltys

Campaign comments

The future’s not ours to see

27-09-2025 06:25 Mayoral tails wagged gubernatorial and presidential dogs in Buenos Aires Province but next month’s midterms stand to be genuinely, not synthetically national with the state of the economy and the quality of governance deciding votes.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

The lion sleeps tonight

20-09-2025 06:31 Milei actually polled a higher percentage in Buenos Aires Province this month than in BA City last May, yet the former is unanimously deemed an unmitigated disaster while the latter was a resounding triumph.

by Michael Soltys

Campaign comments

Blast from the past

13-09-2025 06:09 Last Sunday’s election was very much the mayoral tail wagging the dog and here we’re not just talking about Greater Buenos Aires Peronist “barons” – almost the only successes of third parties came thanks to the PRO mayors bucking the Milei alliance, proving mayoral clout beyond the general trend.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

A tale of two provinces

06-09-2025 07:07 The population of Buenos Aires Province outnumbers over two-thirds (160) of the world’s 233 countries and territories.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Swimming against the current

30-08-2025 06:04 The undecided in Corrientes could just top up Juan Pablo Valdés over the 40 percent needed to ensure first-round victory, although the current Zeitgeist of voter apathy would make it likelier for them to sit this one out.

by Michael Soltys

Campaign comments

Ins and outs of Congress

23-08-2025 06:42 Almost all those deputies taking their leave would doubtless be rubbished by President Milei as “caste” but most carry a political weight far from evident in their prospective replacements.

by Michael Soltys

Campaign comments

Jousting in the lists

16-08-2025 06:30 In broad terms, President Javier Milei’s La Libertad Avanza 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.

by Michael Soltys

Campaign comments

Deadlines or lifelines?

09-08-2025 06:52 We have confirmation of one important definition – the La Libertad Avanza far right and the PRO centre-right extending their Buenos Aires Province alliance to this city.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Anatomy of a macrocephalic

19-07-2025 18:53 While the last census of 2022 showed that Argentina’s population had risen some 15% since the Bicentenary count of 2010, the population of Greater Buenos Aires only rose 9%.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Independence for whom?

12-07-2025 06:13 The Independence Day alliance on the right leaves the Peronists playing catch up after their stab at unification at the Partido Justicialista Congress.

by Michael Soltys

Campaign comments

The autumn of the patriarch

05-07-2025 07:19 Gildo Insfrán’s power stems from the provincial government being by far Formosa’s biggest employer with less than six percent of the workforce having formal jobs in the private sector, boosted by shameless patronage.

by Michael Soltys

Campaign comments

Midterms in midyear

28-06-2025 07:24 Given the total inability of the protagonists in Buenos Aires Province to get their act together, the midterms still four months away are looking more like candidates for “It’s the economy, stupid” than ever.

by Michael Soltys

Campaign comments

Begin the begin

21-06-2025 06:28 Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is paradoxically sidelined and occupying centre stage at the same time. With her exclusion from any electoral candidacy, the campaign effectively starts again.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

The lady vanishes

14-06-2025 06:37 The most immediate question here is who replaces Cristina Fernández de Kirchner at the helm. Problems of Peronist succession have always been so daunting historically that most of the movement would rather not face them.

by Michael Soltys

Campaign comments

On a mission in omission

07-06-2025 06:34 Voting for provincial deputies in Misiones is more likely to be a landslide for the local ruling party than any electoral earthquake.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Where angels fear to tread

31-05-2025 06:33 The demolition job suffered by PRO in the City has most provinces now thinking twice about advancing their elections and exposing local hegemonies to the forces of heaven.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

They also serve who only stand and wait

17-05-2025 06:31 Electoral tides notoriously shift in the final week and even the last minute.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Four-by-four voting

10-05-2025 07:20 Next weekend’s City race hogs the electoral limelight but there is voting even closer in time – like tomorrow when four provinces will be advancing their midterms.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

The great debate

01-05-2025 09:39 The absurd multiplicity of 17 list-heading candidates for 30 City Legislature seats can be boiled down into a triangle of the PRO, libertarian and Peronist blocs, although this does not necessarily translate into only three candidates since others stand to make inroads.

by Michael Soltys

Campaign comments

First day of the rest of the year

19-04-2025 06:00 Economists have hailed the exit from the cepo as a milestone but this columnist hesitates to consider it an electoral game-changer – there is both too much and too little time for that.

by Michael Soltys

Campaign comments

And so it begins

12-04-2025 05:22 This year’s midterm voting begins tomorrow in the major province of Santa Fe with the constituent assembly elections.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Going to the dogs?

16-12-2023 07:20 This final election 2023 column concludes a series running the length of the campaign – now it’s time to detail the resulting political architecture in the present tense.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

They also serve…

02-12-2023 10:23 That stateside visit threw something of a spanner into what is anyway very much a stop-go process of transition and Cabinet-building – Milei would seem anxious to remind people of the first half of his self-definition as an anarcho-capitalist.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Method in his madness?

25-11-2023 14:16 Javier Milei’s solitary rise to the top from almost nowhere in a couple of years is more apparent than real. The key to this success is more like the solution to Agatha Christie’s 'Murder on the Orient Express' – they all did it.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

18-11-2023 06:42 Democratic voting in Argentina ran on the basis of simple majorities until 1972 when that system was a non-starter for a military régime since it would guarantee victory for a Juan Domingo Perón. In order to give themselves the faint chance of the anti-Peronist chunk of society outnumbering the Peronist masses if obliged to vote en bloc, they introduced a system whereby nothing short of an absolute majority would permit victory in the first round.

by Michael Soltys

Campaign comments

Run-up to run-off II

11-11-2023 05:40 If everybody assumed Milei to be the next president after his PASO primary upset with Massa massively favoured following last month’s turnaround, the wheel could be turning full circle again.

by Michael Soltys