Buenos Aires elections: the silence of the innocent

The winners of the Buenos Aires elections were the 47% of residents who expressed indifference to the call to vote. This pattern must be examined with a magnifying glass to arrive at a sincere assessment of who should celebrate, mourn, or worry.

The first thing that should be worried is the national government, which sent one of its spokespersons to win and barely managed to repeat the percentage of votes (30.13%) that the Milei-Villarruel ticket had achieved in 2023 (30.13%).

CABA is the president's district, and where he sought to displace the power that has dominated his government with officials and projects: the Macri-led PRO party, which governs with the Cambiemos coalition. This result challenges the validity of the official narrative that Argentina is undergoing a change of era.

If that were the case, the president's candidate would have won by more than 50% of the vote. That's the percentage with which the Macri system has governed the city for almost 20 years. The indifference of the neighbors is the fact that needs to be analyzed in terms of its political effects. The most obvious is that in an election that the national government managed to nationalize, a ruling party once again prevailed.

This is the trend in contemporary Argentina, only interrupted by the Covid plague. The pandemic led many ruling parties to defeat, from Donald Trump to local Peronism.

With this indifference, the public recognized the nature of the Buenos Aires dispute. It was an election without any epic significance: just a change of shirt and abstention as a message. Everyone has their own perception. The campaign-driven explanations of the government, the opposition, and local management are intertwined.

Everyone is celebrating because they've won something. And there are also the more crude and realistic views. As with voting, each voter leaves a personalized interpretation. From this perspective, the election has little significance. It was nothing more than a change of party within the same political family. It was another stage in the transfer of power that began in 2023 from the Macri-led PRO party to the Millennium Party.

Beyond the barbs, officials who were part of Cambiemos, especially from the PRO party, now occupy the most important positions in the national cabinet. The Cambiemos 2023 presidential ticket is incorporated into the cabinet, as confirmed by key ministers (Caputo, Sturzenegger). The government plans all come from Cambiemos' technical archives—the Basic Law, DNU/70, etc.— and are the unexpired legacy of the Cambiemos ticket. Milei didn't invent the program: she adopted it.

Presenting this election as a battle between two opposing forces is a fiction. It wasn't a war of secession. It was an orderly concession. The confirmation is Macri's political gesture: a flight abroad on election night, and the reiteration of (some) agreement.

Low turnout is the structural factor. 47% of voters stayed home. When actual support is calculated based on the total voter registration, the picture becomes even clearer.

Adorni obtained 15.99% of the votes among the city's total residents. Santoro obtained 14.52%. The PRO (Project for the Promotion of Socialism) obtained 8.46%. Larreta obtained 4.29%, the Left (Izquierda de la Revolución) obtained 1.68%, Marra obtained 1.39%, the Civic Coalition obtained 1.32%, and the Radicals obtained 1.22%. This represents the actual representation of the candidates out of the 3,088,750 eligible voters.

When voter turnout is high, it's an impertinent observation. But when it's so low, as it was in Buenos Aires, it's the source of the true message from the ballot boxes. The vote that won was the vote of disinterest . This result doesn't indicate a revolution or a new majority.

The lack of enthusiasm cannot be separated from the attitude of the district's main representative, Mauricio Macri. He has refused to be a candidate in any category since 2019, when he lost his reelection bid. He refused to run in 2023. He has announced that he will not run for either representative or senator this year. Furthermore, he supports the general direction of the national government because it is its program, implemented by his former officials. There is no strength in his leadership. There is no dispute about the direction.

The 15% vote in the president's district is a result that should worry the ruling party. After months of confrontation, loud measures, and high-sounding statements, that support seems weak. We can't talk about a new force with 15% of the vote and a spokesperson candidate, not a leader.

The voter registry has grown since 2018 with the inclusion of foreign residents. This represents 500,000 new voters, a segment where absenteeism was record-breaking.

How did these migrants interpret the government's announcement, before the election, of tougher policies toward foreigners? Possibly as a hostile signal. Their response was to stay home.

Of the total of 500,000 foreigners, only 14% voted. Those who believe the national government discouraged participation believe that these heavy-handed threats against our Latin American brothers and sisters were deliberate.

When turnout is low, party apparatuses are more important in the outcome. Did La Libertad Avanza mobilize its apparatus, beyond the fake Macri's viral campaign? This scoundrel strategy caused the PRO to lose 4 points in the voting intention tracking between Friday and Sunday.

If the national government sought to benefit from the low turnout, it didn't mobilize the apparatus. It let the vote flow according to the demographics of each neighborhood. This is illustrated by the difference in results in the Retiro area.

That district is divided by the train line. In Retiro Sur (Villa 31), Santoro won, Lospennato second, and Adorni third. Across the rail line, in Retiro Norte, Adorni won, Lospennato second, and Santoro third. In the southern neighborhoods, there was no sign of Peronist mobilization of its apparatus .

A radical bourgeois like Santoro distanced himself from the street riots that frighten the non-Peronist public. He closed his campaign in the sterile lecture hall of the Medicine Department. Peronist voters need to be encouraged to vote, comrade.

Santoro brought quite a few. He's a Radical, from a party whose members vote alone, even when there aren't elections. He adopted the aesthetic that Jorge Telerman had introduced in 1999 for Eduardo Duhalde's campaign, with minimalist backdrops in shades of green. "That's not a Peronist color, comrade," I heard a member whisper .

Milei's government is a minority government, and it may benefit from the least possible participation of the public in electing legislatures. It has demonized Congress and justified the Macri video, constructed with AI, within the boundaries of freedom of expression. This straying into the limits of legality is one of the resources of the "illiberal democracies" studied by Fareed Zakaria. They use republican legality to misuse it.

Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt offer this insight: “The assassins of democracy always have accomplices: people immersed in politics who seemingly abide by the rules of the system, but who simultaneously quietly abuse them. These are what Linz calls “semi-royalist democrats.”

Mainstream politicians can kill democracy when they fuel anti-democratic extremism, but they can also undermine it in other ways. One of these is through constitutional hardball tactics, behavior that, broadly and theoretically, is in accordance with the law, but which at the same time deliberately undermines its spirit. (The Dictatorship of the Minority, Barcelona, ​​Ariel, 2024)

The nationalization of the slogans stripped these elections of their status as a plebiscite on Jorge Macri's administration. The response was indifference toward the urine Larreta smelled of, with a sense worthy of a better cause.

Horacio ran a municipal campaign that was only replicated in Santoro's municipal campaign. But where Santoro won and where his administration was most heavily criticized was also where turnout was lowest. Had there been a real backlash, turnout would have been higher, particularly in the southern neighborhoods where Peronism dominated. In those communes, 43% of the registered voters voted.

This is a reassuring sign for Jorge Macri. He has to save the remaining two years in office. Now, things depend on the reorganization of the legislature with the coalition partners: if the votes of Lospennato, Horacio, the Coalition, and the Radicals are combined, he can attempt a reasonable survival. He lost, yes, but in a low-key election, without any epic. No one gave their lives for or against his administration.

Was Horacio's campaign to vindicate his more than successful 16-year administration a good idea? Perhaps he should have proposed a future, which is what voters are asking for. It's legitimate for him to celebrate the 8 points, which recognized his work. There are plenty of testimonies from people who still claim that Larreta belongs to the PRO (Pro Party).

At the national level of the campaign, Mauricio's appeal to his government's achievements is also stifled, as he would like Milei to recognize him. The PRO political leader insisted he wants an agreement with the national government. He wants to be part of the party . Milei, like every politician in power, wants to retain total control. He doesn't share the pen. He uses someone else's, but he signs it himself.

There are still open paths that will determine the fate of the Macris and Mileis in the district. Can the PRO break out of its self-absorption and chronic inbreeding (lucid assessments made by Jesús Rodríguez and Elisa Carrió, respectively)? Lospennato was an emergency decision by Mauricio. On December 28th, the decree splitting the elections was signed. At that time, María Eugenia Vidal was the candidate. She went on vacation and upon returning said she would only be a campaign manager. As elusive as her boss, why would she be a candidate if Mauricio said no? Lospennato is not from the district and was identified with a campaign like Ficha Limpia, which appeals to the ethical spirit of a minority sector of a liberal and forgiving society. In the land of marches and pickets, no one has seen columns of banners demanding such a refined product advance. It served Lospennato well in increasing his knowledge, but not in defeating Adorni, the spokesman for the Dirty Record that led to the Senate defeat, provoked by the Mileism and Peronism.

The urgency of his candidacy perhaps left him no time to assess his fit within the district's complex demographics. Among the reasons for PRO's defeat, some analysts point to Lospennato's "green" status, which cost him votes in the northern neighborhoods of the city where Adorni fared better .

The abortion issue is a divisive issue, here and around the world. The middle and upper-middle class electorate is predominantly "blue," like the poorest electorate. One question: Did the Church, moved by the imminent death of Pope Francis, have any influence? "The Church didn't play a role this time," says one of the Macri campaign officials, who is not Spanish.

The priests from the slums didn't all play in this match either. Neutrals were Father Tonga (Gastón Colombres, Barrio 15, formerly Ciudad Oculta), Father Andrés (Villa Fátima and Piletones), and Father Martín (Villa 1-11-14). Those who could have leaned in favor of Santoro were Father Toto (Barrio Zabaleta, Villa 21/24), Father Nacho (Barrio 31), Father Damián (Soldati), and Father Facundo (Barrio 20).