An official “comeback” that was not: the keys to the general elections

Argentina closed its first and let’s wait for the last elections in pandemic. In the midst of so much noise we tell you what left a day where more than 34 million people could vote to, among other things, renew half of the Chamber of Deputies and a third of the national Senate. And let’s start with what the numbers tell us that, as a first novelty we have to recognize that this Sunday more voted. If in the PASO the participation was just above 66%, on this day 71% of the voters voted. A number that added votes for the Frente De Todos in the province of Buenos Aires, which leaves the ruling party as the first minority in Deputies, with Together for Change in second place and marking that from this December 4 there will be neither majorities nor its own quorum in the lower house.

It is here where we will have to see if the fight for the Presidency of Deputies comes into play, until today in charge of Sergio Massa but who had hinted that he could give his place to whoever managed to add more votes, something that Together for Change and María Eugenia Vidal claimed but that now was in doubt. The trend continues in the Senate where for the first time since the return of democracy Peronism lost its own quorum, becoming the first minority and now having to negotiate with the opposition any initiative. It is here that the confirmation that the ruling parties in Argentina do not usually win the mid-term elections leaves the question of how the legislative agenda will continue with, for example, Alberto Fernández’s announcement of sending a project to Congress to seek an eventual agreement with the IMF. To this we can add other projects such as the reform of the organic law of the Public Prosecutor’s Office or the Budget, initiatives that if with a strengthened Frente De Todos were not easy to deal with, now it will test the strength of the national ruling party.

Something that will have to be followed closely, more after what were the reactions post PASO and taking into account that in Peronism electoral defeats are usually paid with proper names. The elections leave as the last novelty the Milei phenomenon, a tendency that as a common denominator seems to have what they define as political anti-communism, something more discursive and identitarian than proper to the spaces on which they say they want to differentiate. What for Milei is the caste leaves in evidence a proposal that rejects the political class, seeks freedom and proposes that everything imposed is a theft, ideas that show a global political radicalization that in this election, arrived in Argentina.Decidedly the elected national deputy figure closer to Together for Change than to the Frente De Todos. We will have to see how it passes in a Congress where for 2023 and for both the ruling party and the opposition, any vote will matter. 

Original source in Spanish