In the speech at his Gonnet bunker to digest last Sunday’s devastating double-digit defeat in the Buenos Aires Province midterms, President Javier Milei posed a very interesting question without an interesting answer: how much of the debacle was due to electoral strategy and how much to economic policy (no doubt in his mind that it was all the former and none of the latter)? If wrong there and if his reversal of fortune serves as yet another example of the very simple truth that austerity will never win an election (at least not in Argentina), there is not much which can be done because Milei has painted himself into a corner with an economic policy committed to curbing inflation via exorbitant interest rates and a manipulated exchange rate (not that a pre-electoral announcement of 1.9 percent August inflation instead of last Wednesday would have changed much and not that the dollar has been static in the last six weeks) – the economic slowdown is bound to impact a province producing 57 percent of the country’s manufactured exports and 37 percent of its farming.
But while “It’s the economy, stupid!” remains the grand cliché, there is every reason to conclude that last Sunday was all about him – a massive repudiation of Milei rather than any vindication of the ramshackle administration of Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof (for whom the status of virtual president-elect awarded by some remains a remote horizon, although also considerably closer). And that alone makes Sunday’s defeat bad news because his unique aura – the novelty value of a complete outsider stepping into the vacuum of democratic fatigue to win the 2023 presidential elections, the invulnerability of his opinion polls ratings amid Churchillian blood, sweat and tears – is all gone in a flash. Nationalising a provincial contest into a plebiscite and advance opinion poll thus emerges as a colossal error even if some argue that without the presidential figure La Libertad Avanza would have fared even worse, given their lacklustre campaign with largely unknown candidates.
Yet the question should not only be what is good for Milei but what is good for the province going to the polls. There the nationalisation rendered a distinct disservice by banishing the province’s problems from all debate. Crime (especially drug-trafficking) with overcrowded prisons, education with plunging scholastic standards, public hospitals in general and the IOMA healthcare scheme for the 600,000 provincial employees in particular in a state of collapse, complaints about arbitrary taxation, the proliferation of gaming, the scandal of the speed camera fines and the calamitous state of rural roads (where Milei carries much responsibility) were all issues ripe for debate. And since this election was ostensibly to renew 23 senators and 46 deputies, a legislature which hardly ever sessions could usefully have been the centre of discussion, even extending to introducing unicameralism and updating a hopelessly antiquated distribution of representation whereby Greater Buenos Aires with 71 percent of the population has 35 percent of the seats.
Turning to the election itself, a Peronist win in a province voting for Sergio Massa even in 2023 (one of just four among the 24 districts) is no great surprise but the margin of over 13 percent remains a shock – the opinion polls begged to differ from Milei’s own forecast of a “technical draw,” sometimes giving Peronism a lead of several percent but never double digits. So what happened? Both the main sides closed ranks (with La Libertad Avanza absorbing PRO) but the right less completely than Peronism. Yet the chief factor would seem to be absenteeism increasing by over two million voters (despite one of the few turnouts above 60 percent this year) and far more at Milei’s expense than Kicillof’s. The key mayoral role in ensuring turnout underlines the folly of competing centre-right and libertarian candidates in 2023 since it left Peronism with 84 of the province’s 135 districts. One key question is whether the absentees came from the 30 percent voting for Milei throughout 2023 or the 26 percent who joined him in the run-off. The conventional explanation is the latter but could the desertion also be coming from a volatile and often lumpenproletarian libertarian vote?
Milei’s critics, who are now multiple in defeat, often centre on his churlish bullying and vulgar discourse but perhaps the economist’s real problem is a one-track mind taking no interest in issues like education and health (the universities and Garrahan Children’s Hospital) or displaying empathy with the sacrifices demanded by solvency – there is where he needs to change.
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