The results of Argentina’s presidential election have produced an interesting result in the recovery of the Peronist Sergio Massa from the primary election. While Javier Milei retained his 30 percent, Massa managed to convert his 21 percent into a respectable 37 percent, enough to snatch the election from the libertarian acandidate. Conservative Patricia Bullrich also experienced an improvement in her third position, from 17 percent to 24 percent. Insomuch as Argentina’s ballotage system requires a candidate to obtain 45 percent of the votes (or 40 percent and 10 percent more than the runner-up) to win in a round, the two most voted candidates will face one another in a run-off election on November 19.
They both have one month to attract the voters of the remaining candidates into their orbits. While it would seem clear that Sergio Massa could secure the voters of the also Peronist Juan Schiaretti and leftist Myriam Bregman, the former has often been critical of the current government (wherein Massa is the minister of economy), which would put his voters in an invidious situation. On the other hand, the voters of the conservative Bullrich might seem naturaly inclined to shift towards Milei. However, let us bear in mind that Argentina is a country where Peronism (i.e. State collectivism) has become so ingrained in the social fabric that even self-proclaimed conservatives flinch at the radical measures proposed by the libertarian.
During the crucial next four weeks, we can expect the government to put all their machinery into gear to back their candidate and smear Milei. At the same time, Javier will have to further delve into the political strategical game to try to appeal to a larger voting mass. The Argentinian politician Raúl Baglini gave his name in 1986 to a theorem stating that the closer a politician gets to power, the less radical and more mainstream he becomes. Unfortunately, idealistic libertarians will have to stomach Milei compromising some of his most controversial points to reach out to potential voters, as he already did to establish his platform La Libertad Avanza (e.g. although his personal position on drug legalization is publicly known to be favorable, such a thorny issue for his conservative allies has just been cast aside, and when pushed for an answer by journalists the answer is a succinct: “it is not an urgent issue at the moment”).
In anticipation of the run-off election, we can draw two main conclusions from these results. First, the fact that Milei received almost eight million votes with a message so counter-intuitive and difficult to process for most people is reason for hope and optimism. Second, the fact that the ministry of economy that led the country to an inflation rate of ca. 140 percent, with 40 percent of its population in poverty, received almost ten million is reason for concern. Concern about the power and influence that governments can have on their populations through State propaganda and by making them dependant on their subsidies and maintenance.
