This Sunday, Argentina faces the most crucial elections since the end of the dictatorship in 1983. It is not a cliché. The situation is unprecedented. For the first time, an ultra-rightist, Javier Milei, can reach the Casa Rosada. It is true that for many years the country of Mafalda has been settled in uncertainty, no matter who governs. In this situation, the Peronist candidate, Sergio Massa, is much more predictable than the unknown Milei, even if he now has the support of the traditional right represented by Mauricio Macri.
As happened during the first round on October 22, the anarcho-capitalist economist is the favorite in the polls, although now with less of an advantage. Then the polls got it wrong and Milei was second on 30%, behind Massa on almost 37%. Now, the difference is narrower and highlights the high number of undecideds, who could decide the presidency. Of the last thirteen surveys carried out since the first round, Milei would obtain an average of 45% against Massa’s 42%.
The thirteen points missing from completing 100% are undecided or people who express their intention to vote blank or void, options that could be higher than other times considering the unprecedented disjunctive that Argentines face : to choose between a Peronist who comes from ultraliberalism and now represents a justicialist coalition – Union for the Fatherland – dominated on paper by Kirchnerism and which concentrates the centre-left vote; or support an extremist outsider who, with his party, La Llibertat Avança, proposes a savage cut of the State, dollarize the economy or liberalize the sale of organs and who, moreover, ensures that he speaks with his dead dog, Conan.
These polls were taken before the televised debate that the two candidates starred in on Sunday night at the Faculty of Law of the University of Buenos Aires. Analysts agreed yesterday that Massa won this debate, cornering Milei with personal references and constant questions to which the far-right reacted by trying to keep his manners, after having become popular precisely for his outbursts of anger, first during his stage as a television host and also later as a politician.
In fact, yesterday Milei himself assured Radio Miter that Massa was “very aggressive” with him and that he tried to leave him as “unbalanced, who is not capable of governing”. In addition, the ultra leader denounced the Peronist candidate for having placed “a coughing heart” or “coughers” among the debate audience so that they could distract him. The words recall the interview that a few days after the first round he gave on a television program, in which Milei complained that the noises on the set bothered him and left some sentences that once again called into question his stability emotional
During the debate, both candidates accused each other of lying. “If you were Pinocchio, you would have already hurt one of my eyes”, he said to his rival Milei, who became defensive as if he was not the opponent. Meanwhile, it did not seem that Massa was Minister of Economy of the current Government of Alberto Fernández, in a country with 138% inflation and 40% poverty. Milei also did not decide to exploit the vein of the numerous corruption scandals that sprinkle Peronism from the time of Néstor Kirchner until today.
Neither ex-president Macri nor Patricia Bullrich, the candidate of the traditional right who with the Junts pel Canvi coalition came third in the first round, with almost 24%, went to the Faculty of Law. It is expected that a large part of these votes will go to Milei, who during the campaign for this second round has exercised moderation, avoiding losing the papers and hiding the chainsaw with which he promised to cut the State and put an end to the “political caste” of which Macri and Bullrich were part – until October 22, as the candidate himself assured until that day.
However, Junts pel Canvi also hosts a centrist sector led by the Radical Civic Union, in which many of the voters, despite being a historically anti-Peronist party, would vote for Massa in order to avoid the ultra drift of Milei, whom implicitly Macri promises to moderate if he reaches the Casa Rosada. A mission that becomes unknown considering the character of the candidate.
Another decisive factor is the path that the dissident Peronist Juan Schiaretti’s voters will take, who in the first round came fourth with 6.73%. Governor of the province of Córdoba, Schiaretti has not expressed support for either candidate, although polls estimate that his voters would be divided. It is for some reason that Milei has decided to close the campaign on Thursday in Córdoba.
Yesterday Schiaretti winked at Massa receiving Estela de Carlotto, president of Ávies de la Plaza de Mayo, at the final stretch of a campaign in which the defense of human rights has also played a very prominent role: the Milei’s candidate for vice-president is Victoria Villarruel, a lawyer sympathetic to the dictatorship.
