2023-07-29 00:27:53
The general elections in Argentina continue to approach, and a highly uncertain result continues to be debated regarding which candidate of which political force may be the winner.
It is very strange that it is not ruled out that the pro-government front, now called Unión por la Patria, will lose the election, because almost five months following the end of that mandate, Argentina today suffers from monthly inflation that Economy Minister Sergio shows Massa when they reach 6%, because what is expected is that we will face monthly inflation that reaches or exceeds 7 or 8%. In this same mess of things, interannual inflation today reaches 115.6%, and the parallel dollar, which is the one that operates in the real market, continues to increase (because the peso continues to devalue).
Sergio Massa landed in the economic portfolio a year ago, with a parallel dollar that was trading at $296 and today is trading at $551. Poverty continues to mark percentages above 40% according to all the organizations and consultants that measure it, and indigence is around 10% of the population. For its part, the Central Bank shows us what it owes – US$ 7,000 million, Argentina has a balance of negative net reserves and the agreements with the IMF that were going to be known according to Massa “in a while”, remain unknown later of weeks.
A year ago, when the state of the macroeconomic situation was less horrible than the current one, Massa and those who accompany him on his work team told us that he was flirting with hyperinflation. This is how Argentina is today, with terrifying inflation rates, without reservations, increasingly indebted and with pitiful percentages of poverty and indigence. For this reason, it is difficult to imagine that the candidate of the pro-government front can win an election, especially if the candidate of that front is the Minister of Economy who continues to succumb to us a year ago in greater unrest and misery.
On the other hand, the Juntos por el Cambio (JxC) coalition continues to strengthen itself at the provincial and local level, and in the elections that are being held in the different districts, JxC is gaining space, either because it wins for governors or provincial municipalities or because it adds legislators in several of several of these territories. And in the face of an officialism that has been governing so badly, the chances of winning at the national level, by presenting itself organically as the main opposition, should be very high. However, the split that exists within the coalition allows the inmate between “doves” responding to Horacio Rodríguez Larreta’s candidacy and “hawks” responding to Patricia Bullrich’s candidacy, weakening comprehensive support for the coalition . The inmate in Together for Change at times becomes stark. In a dirty recontra campaign we were able to verify in view of the PASO elections held in Santa Fe how the national senator Carolina Losada, JxC “hawk”, linked the former Santa Fe Security Minister, Maximiliano Pullaro, JxC “dove”, to the drug trafficking The PASOs were easily won by Pullaro, and Losada, supported in a number of spots by Bullrich and Mauricio Macri himself, today must recalculate to get back together with whom he accused of having ties to al
drug trafficking At the Buenos Aires level, we observe how the pre-candidate for Buenos Aires head of government “hawk” Jorge Macri throws “125” over the head of Martín Lousteau, while the radical pre-candidate “dove” insinuates without pause that Jorge Macri does not dare to debate with him because he has no proposals.
At the national level, Bullrich reveals in her campaign spots that she is the change and that Rodríguez Larreta might be the continuation of this chaos that we are suffering, and Rodríguez Larreta reminds Bullrich that she was part of the recontra disaster experienced in 2001 following the blunders of the Alliance in which she was Minister of Labor. The national PASOs will be held in a couple of weeks, but the day following they will have to gather the “hawks” and “doves” and they will have to rally the voters of the “hawks” and the “doves”, which, if they believe Their political leaders should leave the coalition if the opposition candidate wins the internal one.
On the other hand, a third competitive force also appears competitive with chances of triumphing in the next elections, La Libertad Avanza led by Javier Milei. According to data collected by different opinion polls, Milei would be losing electoral support or would not be gaining followers in this stretch of the campaign. In any case, it is estimated that the libertarian leader would probably reach the support of approximately a third of the electorate disenchanted with politics and with the “caste” that lives
of politics and not for politics. This possible loss of electoral support for Milei probably responds to the fact that the alleged buying and selling of candidacies between Milei and Sergio Massa became public knowledge, following verifying that a high percentage of candidates on the lists of the libertarian force in the provinces and municipalities, are members of the Frente Renovador de Massa and of Kirchnerism, of the “caste” according to the ideas of Milei and his militancy.
The vice president of the Argentines who has chosen Alberto Fernández to be elected in 2019, has told us that we are facing a three-thirds election, and for this reason a second electoral round seems to be expected. And it is probable that it will happen if Juntos por el Cambio does not come together, and it is probable that it will happen due to a fact that is perhaps being underestimated when analyzing possible electoral scenarios, and that is that in the provincial elections – in 19 provinces out of 24 there were already or split elections are being held with the national ones – electoral abstention reaches a percentage that is around 30 to 40% of the electoral register.
And all this seems to mean at least three things: first, that if such a situation is replicated at the national level, the percentage of those who do not vote might equal or exceed the percentages that the various pollsters assign to the three forces with chances of to reach the presidency, second, that not all those disenchanted with politics would opt for Javier Milei -who in all the provinces obtained a very small number of votes or did not even compete- and third, that if those disenchanted with politics do not vote, the forces that have a “low ceiling but high floor” can win an election, even if such a force has governed horribly for three years and seven months.
Certainty over uncertainty continues to grow in the 2023 Argentine elections.
Sandra Choroszczucha – Political Scientist and Professor at the University of Buenos Aires
www.sandrach.com.ar
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