It must be difficult being Silvia Lospennato, the PRO candidate in the City of Buenos Aires last weekend. What was supposed to be the electorate which might have been seduced in Sunday's elections? Those opposed to Javier Milei’s scant republicanism and the aggressive presidential speeches so alien to the historic messages of Mauricio Macri, while at the same time rejecting any Peronist alternative? Or the electorate which is sympathetic to La Libertad Avanza’s economic model beyond its institutional conduct?
These questions are valid because they emerge from the same contradictory speeches of PRO founder Mauricio Macri. His potential electorate in the City had every right to confusion last Sunday – to which version of the ex-president should they be listening?
To the one who urged voting for Milei in the 2023 run-off and backed almost all his bills in Congress, while continuing to praise him until just a few weeks ago? Or the one marking limits to Milei all this time when the latter turned more aggressive and extreme?
Which Macri was the potential electorate to whom Lospennato appealed during her campaign supposed to follow? The one accusing the government of using the shadiest tactics of the caste, for example, when frustrating her ‘Ficha Limpia’ (“Clean Slate”) bill? Or the one who until the last moment requested, in public and in private, a PRO alliance with that same government?
Lospennato wanted to escape those party contradictions by trying to convince the City electorate that only municipal issues were up for definition this time out. Although technically the elections were for district legislators, it was impossible for voters to ignore the nationwide phenomenon of Milei.
All the opinion polls point to an Argentina split down the middle between a 40-45 percent backing the government and another 40-45 percent rejecting it (along with a further percentage in doubt). And within those two universes increasingly extreme stances co-exist on both sides.
It would have been weird if, in the Argentina of Milei, the porteños had voted bearing in mind only the state of the pavements or future subway lines.
The 30 percent voting for Manuel Adorni was voting for Milei (as made explicit in his campaign). A percentage matching the 30 percent for Milei in both the PASO primaries and the first round of the general elections in 2023, which would seem to be the hard core of La Libertad Avanza.
In an election inevitably overtaken by the social clash between those for and against Milei, the government celebrated Sunday’s first place as an absolute success. In his celebratory speech, Adorni treated it as if it had been a plebiscite, “an election between two models, the model of the caste and privileges and the model of liberty. Today liberty won.”
I agree that it would be impossible to imagine the porteños not voting to support or reject this government model. In that sense it might be said that a third voted for the two government candidates (Adorni plus Ramiro Marra) while over half or 51 percent (adding Leandro Santoro, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Vanina Biasi, among others) opted for anti-Milei candidates.
Due to the confusion mentioned at the start, it is hard to know how many of the 16 percent who voted for Lospennato were responding to the supportive or more critical Macri. If divided into two, the eight percent who voted PRO without ceasing to back the national government would take that third up to 41 percent while the eight percent who voted for Lospennato but presumably would not vote for Milei would take the rejection up from 51 to 59 percent.
The plausible hypothesis of Adorni that this was a plebiscite in favour of or against the government obliges a comparison with the plebiscite of the 2023 run-off between Milei and Sergio Massa in City voting. On that occasion Milei clinched over 57 percent of the votes as against less than 43 percent for the Peronist candidate.
However uncertain the comparison between that 57 percent of support and the 41 percent presumably obtained last Sunday, Milei’s conclusion that first place with 30 percent of the votes signifies massive City support for the national government seems more controversial.
It remains true that, beyond any comparison, first place has a real symbolic value. Leandro Santoro would have celebrated the same success if he had been the one winning by 2.5 percentage points. Peronism reaching 30 percent would have signified a good election but no better than others with a similar percentage. But with a triumph last Sunday, that same percentage would have been worth more.
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