Which 2021 election will be the most transformative/important?

[Red Velvet]

Ehh, who really cares about Catalonia when you have Upper Austria coming up ?

I voted for Chile anyway

Who cares about Chile ? Except the South Americans ...

Who cares about Austria? Except the Europeans (and even then, not all)...

Chile recent political history is way more interesting than all these places. Germany won’t have Merkel but it won’t significantly change the country’s soul or its standing.

1. Chile
2. Germany
3. Israel (behind Germany only because I think Netanyahu will keep power. Besides, it’s not like elections in Israel are something special these days.)

[Red Velvet]

In Argentina the new libertarian front has been polling anywhere from high single digits to just over 20%.

There's basically no way they win outright but they could conceivably hold the balance of power.

It's an uphill battle but I have a hard time imagining a more transformative election than going from a Kirchnerist legislature to a hardcore libertarian one.

You way overestimate what is in play. Argentina, on top of being a presidential country, renovates just half of their congress on 2021. The current legislature is almost evenly divided between peronism and macrism, so even if libertarians make an impact it will be hardly transformative.

Yes, it's a midterm legislative election in a presidentialist country. Midterm elections in Argentina can provide surprise results and I suspect the outcome of this one in October 2021 will depend highly on the socioecononic post-covid context. It's plausible a defeat of the incumbent government, or the upsurge of third parties and protest vote. However, the impact of midterm elections is not neccessarily definitive. For instance, the kirchnerist alliance lost the 2009 legislatives and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner won in a landslide only two years later. As for the libertarians, they are polling well but that 22% looks like an outlier. Anyway the Espert boys are on the rise from 1.5% in the last presidential elections. Macri would like to add the libs to his coalition, but Espert refuses deeming both Macri and the Peronists as "part of the problem". Anyway polítics in Argentina are personality-driven and the battles not fought on ideology (I mean, people know who is Espert but not the difference between "liberal" and "libertarian"). Also, Frente de Todos is not kirchnerista but a broader alliance incorporating most peronist factions. Macri, on the other hand, leads a "republican" alliance opposing to the "populists"

I imagine that in Argentina (not too unlike in Spain actually) liberal gets used as a synonym to libertarian?

I think it’s a similar meaning that we have in Brazil, in which liberal is just perceived as a “moderate” version of libertarians. Liberalism on the classic economical sense.

I think Liberal in a social sense is more of a thing from Anglophone countries, in which liberal is associated with social progressivism. And that some annoying TV broadcasters here who comment on US politics try to sell as the “normal” in order to make liberalism friendly to the left so that they can also pass all the economic austerity stuff in disguise lmao.

[Red Velvet]

Isn't "libertarian" often an euphemistic self-description of pinochetistas and bolsonaristas, in Latin America and elsewhere?

Pretty much yeah but not exactly lmao. At least libertarians massively voted for Bolsonaro here, although there is a difference from libertarians and Bolsonaro most rabid fanbase.

Conservatives and Liberals united on the Bolsonaro figure under the common goal of defeating the left, which can range from social-democrats to socialists.

Conservatives are people associated to different and broad social conservative values, which in Latin America is usually strongly tied to religion. Liberals otoh don’t care about social issues other than having nice speech for cameras, they just really want economic austerity. The left is more defined by economic positions too, but the activists are very socially progressive. Usually the most elected women, LGBT and non-white people are on the left for example.

Libertarians would be an updated version of liberals, kinda closer to ancaps but not fully, libertarians tend to be more defined by their anti-State positions (for the poor at least). Also, a libertarian party like NOVO is the whitest one of all. But they don’t have the guts of openly defining themselves as “Bolsonaristas”, they just try to publicly stay on the fence while voting alligned with the government on practically everything.

[Red Velvet]

I always thought Peronism ideology would always reign in Argentina because it’s defined as a general broad populism that continuously adjusts itself according to what the mood of population is. 90s Menem neoliberalism was Peronism, but so was the pink tide with the Kirchners lmao. It can quickly shift between left and right, being perfect for any party to have eternal power and influence.

Macri’s election made me more skeptical of this belief though. Even if he failed hard as president, antiperonism still seems strong, just like Kirchnerism (which makes a radical shift in Peronism more unlikely). Could maybe be evidence of a start of a bipolarized era in which two forces take turns in office and the Peronist camp stays more associated with the Kirchnerist left.

Nether Peronism or Anti-Peronism will magically solve Argentina’s problems though, which are way deeper than anything related to ideology. It’s a 70-year trend. Much less Libertarians will be the solution.