Argentina Legislative Elections, November 14

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

Maybe the electoral commission knows something I don't but I'm pretty sure Randazzo is going to take a seat either from Espert or Todos in the end. Otherwise it looks like things are pretty much set so at least this is an election where we can go to bed early

EDIT: I figured it out. So apparently the 3% threshold is 3% of the total voter roll, which Randazzo, despite nominally having 4.4% of the vote, is still under.

But at the time of writing he's a few hundred votes short so I have a hard time seeing him not getting through and taking Espert's 3rd seat.

[Edu]

Just coming here to add that the kirchnerists are claiming some sort of victory and an extraordinary election and they are calling for people to come out and celebrate next wednesday when the sindicalists are going to march in favor of the government. He even thanked the governors and said it was a triumph

LMAO, Macondo indeed.

[Edu]

[Skye]

Get rekt Kirchner.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

I might have figured out the mystery of the unusually high UCeDe result in La Rioja.

One cause is that they happened to be running Martin Menem, the nephew of the former president, for the provincial legislature. His name gave enough tailwind to get them around 5% in the PASO.

The other is that at the very tail end of the campaign he was literally the only candidate outside of CABA to get Milei's official endorsement or a rally in his support.

https://twitter.com/NYGBertie/status/1458169560670949379

Turnout was surprisingly high for a small city in the interior but the median age looks like it was about 17 so maybe not as many voters as it looks. Still, he was boosted 7% and safely qualified with 12% so this might be the first sign Milei has reach beyond the city. Interestingly this boost didn't hurt Juntos in the slightest (they actually rose slightly from the PASO) so apparently his supporters just wouldn't vote otherwise. Espert is probably pretty annoyed he didn't hold any joint rallies in the conurbano, it might have actually helped save that 5th seat from Randazzo.

On that note, Milei had officially been a deputy for about an hour before all but announcing that he'll run for president in 2023

https://twitter.com/laderechadiario/status/1460059567430242309

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

Disputes over the last ballots could determine 4 seats.

La Rioja is the closest. JxC needs just 80 votes to flip the second seat back, which doesn't seem at all unrealistic.

In PBA Randazzo only needs a few hundred votes (in absolute terms, not relative to his margin) so he's extremely likely to take Espert's third seat. But if the last votes are extremely good for Espert and Randazzo crosses then he could take the 15th seat from Todos instead.

In Jujuy the radicals are disputing that around 10k PASO ballots deposited for the general election should be counted. If their argument is accepted then they'd win back the second seat from either the government or FIT

and in Río Negro JxC won 27.1% to FdT's 26.9% so that could flip back too

[H. Ross Peron]

So a centre-left party returns to power after being out of office for four years only to run into inflation and Covid-19 that leaves them badly hammered in the midterm elections. Sounds familiar...

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

A few days ago, @andy_tow posted interactive precinct (or electoral circuits) maps of Buenos Aires City and Gran Buenos Aires, including by turnout and by party strength

Turnout by province: https://t.co/kjVSIMTsRd?amp=1

Buenos Aires City


Turnout: https://www.pagina12.com.ar/383047-elecciones-2021-en-caba-en-que-barrio-porteno-fue-mas-gente-
Which party won by precinct: https://t.co/thUW2fDTsi?amp=1

Milei vote share: https://www.pagina12.com.ar/383039-asi-fue-el-voto-a-javier-milei-en-las-elecciones-2021-en-cab
FIT: https://www.pagina12.com.ar/383040-elecciones-2021-en-caba-como-le-fue-al-frente-de-izquierda-e

Gran Buenos Aires:
Which party won on each precinct
https://www.pagina12.com.ar/383266-elecciones-2021-como-les-fue-al-frente-de-todos-y-a-juntos-e
Margin of victory
https://www.pagina12.com.ar/383278-elecciones-2021-la-diferencia-de-votos-entre-el-frente-de-to?amp=1

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

BREAKING


Vamos con Vos finally got to the required 3% of the electoral roll of Buenos Aires Province which means that Florencio Randazzo, the head of the list, will get a seat as Diputado, which would've otherwise gone to  Avanza Libertad's third candidate Hugo Bontempo

[Cortarán todas las flores, pero jamás detendrán la primavera]

Well i think this results are now final:

Juntos por el Cambio: 61 deputies and 14 senators
Frente de Todos: 50 deputies and 9 senators
Hacemos por Córdoba: 3 deputies and 1 senator
Frente de Izquierda y los Trabajadores: 4 deputies
Avanza Libertad/La Libertad Avanza: 4 deputies
Vamos con vos: 1 deputy
Partido Socialista: 1 deputy
Movimiento Popular Neuquino: 1 deputy
Juntos somos Río Negro: 1 deputy
Somos Energía Renovadora para Santa Cruz: 1 deputy
Frente Renovador para la Concordia Misionera: 1 deputy



The final composition of congress will only be known after the new legislators take office next month, but it would be something like this:


In the chamber of deputies:

FdT: 118 (-2). Given the bleak post-primaries expectations, a decent result, they remain the largest bloc or first minority, and thus retain the presidency of the chamber.
Before the election there was some talk about a possible break up of the bloc, due to tensions between the "kirchnerist" and the "peronist" factions of government, this seems to have subsided, but with the threat of division gone, they'll have to deal with the other big issue, that they didn't get any closer to the necessary 129 deputies for quorum. Sergio Massa and Máximo Kirchner (the president of the chamber and bloc leader, repectively) will have to work hard to get the support of the opposition and the smaller parties in order to get anything done.

JxC: 116 (+1). Given the post-primaries expectations, a rather disappointing result, they were aiming at 120 and to surpass the FdT, but it's certainly not a bad result either. The internal compostion of the "inter-bloc" it's not clear yet, there's a lot of movements taking place, but my estimations are this:
PRO: ~49
UCR: ~47
CC-ARI: 11
And about 9 or 10 deputies from smaller, mainly provincial allied parties.

The Left Front doubled their seats (which wasn't that difficult, they had only two), but after 2019 they looked at the risk of losing parliamentary representation, so they're very happy. How they'll behave is always mystery, they're kinda like the wildcard of congress, bills you'd expect them not to care about they vote on, bills you'd expect them to support (like last year's tax on millionaires), they abstain. At least we can expect some fiery exchanges with the liberal deputies.

And speaking of, the liberal lists of Avanza Libertad and La Libertad Avanza got 4 seats, but it's unclear wheter they'll form a single bloc or separate ones. Espert says they're discussing it but Milei says they aren't and he doesn't seem too keen on it.
This just a feeling i have, and I won't make any predictions, but it wouldn't surprise me, given the very strong personalities of their members (especially of Milei), if by 2023 all four have gone their separate ways. It kinda reminds me of the "Somos vida" list that got five seats in the provincial legislature of Santa Fe in 2019, a personality driven, anti-abortion alliance that quickly disolved due to internal dissagrements (two of those legislators are now with JxC).

Lastly, there are talks between the the provincial parties (MPN, JSRN, FRCM and HpC), the Socialists and the peronists of Consenso federal (whom i assume Randazzo will join) to form a single "Federal inter-bloc". This would give them a lot of leverage on the government, their combined 13 votes are the key to the quorum, and that would make their votes very valuable (and very expensive, a lot of funds and infrastructure works would be given in exchange).


As for the senate:

FdT: 35 (-6), which means they don't have a majority anymore. Not nearly as dramatic a situation as many have put it, they're only two votes away from quorum and can still reach it with support from the provincial parties. But those 2 votes will now become very valuable and, as said before, very expensive.
Still a very uncomfortable situation for Cristina, she had little interest in presiding the senate already, now add a more powerful opposition bloc, were some of the new senators are among her most harshest critics; she might stop showing up altogether for the remainder of her term.

JxC: 31 (+6), good result, necessary one too (checks and balances and all that). The opposition certainly got lucky, the batch of provinces that had to elect senators this year was very favourable to them, but it was still quite a good performance.
Internally it's:
UCR: 19
PRO: 10
And two from provincial allies (Producción y Trabajo and Partido de la Justicia Social)

I'm not sure what will happen to the three senators from "Parlamentario Federal", they acted as allies of JxC until now, so i assume they'll continue this way.

Hacemos por Córdoba, the electoral alliance of Córdoba's schismatic PJ regained the seat they had lost when senator Carlos Caserio joined the FdT, an utterly incomprehensible move given how antikirchnerist Córdoba is (as exemplified by the fact that in that province the PJ runs against the FdT).

The senators of JSRN and FRCM are now the key to the quorum, they will soon start collecting favours from the national government.

I guess this election resulted in three things:

• The consolidation of the two big coalitions.
• The growth of the extremes on both right and left.
• As polarization between the coalitions grows, centrist options become less appealing and more irrelevant at the national level, surviving only on a local level in the form of provincial parties, whose defense of regional interests is always attractive to local voters.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

Going to do a writeup about the aftermath later but since https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elecciones_legislativas_de_Argentina_de_2021 of all places has the most up to date numbers we can dig into the popular vote. According to Wikipedia, the results are

JxC: 9 832 813 votes, 41.89% (-5%)

FdT: 7 879 511 votes, 33.03% (-32.1%)

Right / Libertarian / Liberal: 1 680 430 votes, 7.22% (+521.5%) (!)

Federal Peronists/Third Way: 1 313 858 votes, 5.65% (-27.9%)

FIT-U: 1 270 540 votes, 5.46%(+66.2%)

Others: 1,288,275, 5.54%

So its fair to say this election was lost rather than won, since Juntos actually won fewer votes than last time but gained ground anyway because the vote for Todos completely collapsed. Over 3 million votes left between elections, and that was after pulling all the stops to regain lost votes from the PASO. They can't even blame vote splitting because the Federal Peronists collapsed almost as hard as they did. They shouldn't have too much problem getting things through the lower house since most of the independents will be open to negotiation and at least a few (eg. SER Santa Cruz's deputy) are probably going to basically sit with the government but if things don't dramatically turn around they're going to get completely wiped out in two years.

Besides that, Wikipedia's categorization of the parties is okay for the two main parties but needs better context for the remainder to figure out the real order.

The "right wing" parties could be broadly broken into three groups: parties officially affiliated with Milei and Espert, parties that want to be officially affiliated with them, and independent right wing parties.

The first group consists of LLA, AL and UCeDe, plus UNITE (their nominal national vehicle before RLM jumped ship and which is already trying to draft Milei for president in 2023), Partido Libertad, Valores y Cambio from Misiones which is notably the only Libertarian Party that was able to meet the onerous requirements to run independently without the support of an older party. In total these parties received 1 125 000 votes for right and just under 5%.

The second includes, most notably, Fuerza Republicana in Tucuman, which has had a sudden reinvention as a liberal/libertarian force, as well as smaller provincial parties parties Vamos in Mendoza and the UPF in Córdoba. So the total number of votes for parties that either are affiliated with the two main liberals or officially want to be would be 1 281 000 for 5.5% of the national popular vote

The largest "independent" right wing force was Hotton's Valores+, which is kind of debatable because to my understanding she endorsed Milei but not Espert so you could arguably include her in either of the prior groups but I thought not. The next largest is Córdoba's Encuentro Vecinal Córdoba, and including various smaller right wing parties the total vote for the "independent" right was just under 400 000 (just under 2% nationally) bringing the total right wing vote to 1 680 000 for 7.2% of the vote

The Left's numbers, meanwhile, only include those that are officially a part of FIT-U, so that can be considered their core vote. Including independent splitters, most notably Zamora's AyC would add about 100 000 more votes to increase it to ~1 370 000 (5.9%), and if we're really generous and toss in "fellow travelers" outside of the two official coalitions then adding in FAP and PS would boost the "broad left" vote by 260 000 votes to 1 630 000 (7%)

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

And speaking of, the liberal lists of Avanza Libertad and La Libertad Avanza got 4 seats, but it's unclear wheter they'll form a single bloc or separate ones. Espert says they're discussing it but Milei says they aren't and he doesn't seem too keen on it.
This just a feeling i have, and I won't make any predictions, but it wouldn't surprise me, given the very strong personalities of their members (especially of Milei), if by 2023 all four have gone their separate ways. It kinda reminds me of the "Somos vida" list that got five seats in the provincial legislature of Santa Fe in 2019, a personality driven, anti-abortion alliance that quickly disolved due to internal dissagrements (two of those legislators are now with JxC).

They're thinking of splitting apart due to differences in strategy.

Espert has the straightforward goal of cooperating with Juntos in some kind of giant anti-government primary. He tried to negotiate such an arrangement for the legislative election but was stymied by the local CC and UCR. Still, his priority is clearly to unseat Todos by any means necessary and after his good result I'd imagine he'd have a much easier time convincing JxC to let him participate in their PASO under favourable conditions.

Whereas Milei has a much more ambitious (and crazy) goal: to unite the right wing of PRO, the remaining Federal Peronists and the various right wing provincial parties into a broad right of center coalition against both Kirchner and Larreta. Some of those he's mentioned include Patricia Bullrich, former Salta governor JM Urtubey, current Córdoba governor Juan Schiaretti and even ex-President Macri. If they somehow came together it would definitely be a major force with nationally recognized figures but having so many big heads could actually be a disadvantage. However much they might talk favourably of Milei to try to win his supporters, would the former President or the most notable Federal Peronist governor with presidential ambitions actually subordinate themselves to a wacky TV economist? My guess is not.

Nevertheless, he's already started travelling and generating press, with his first event in Formosa in support of a local libertarian leader arrested earlier in the year for protests that accused the local government of being dictatorial. This accusation was swiftly disproven when a kid that was at the event was identified and received a threatening friendly call from his teacher: "Gildo te tiene controlado, si fuiste a joder con ese Milei, perdiste"

Oh and also the poll by poll results map updated for the general election is up. Shoutout to station "Escuela N°05 Roberto Billinghurst" in Parque Avellaneda for being the only one where Milei won more votes than Vidal.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

And speaking of, the liberal lists of Avanza Libertad and La Libertad Avanza got 4 seats, but it's unclear wheter they'll form a single bloc or separate ones. Espert says they're discussing it but Milei says they aren't and he doesn't seem too keen on it.
This just a feeling i have, and I won't make any predictions, but it wouldn't surprise me, given the very strong personalities of their members (especially of Milei), if by 2023 all four have gone their separate ways. It kinda reminds me of the "Somos vida" list that got five seats in the provincial legislature of Santa Fe in 2019, a personality driven, anti-abortion alliance that quickly disolved due to internal dissagrements (two of those legislators are now with JxC).

They're thinking of splitting apart due to differences in strategy.

Espert has the straightforward goal of cooperating with Juntos in some kind of giant anti-government primary. He tried to negotiate such an arrangement for the legislative election but was stymied by the local CC and UCR. Still, his priority is clearly to unseat Todos by any means necessary and after his good result I'd imagine he'd have a much easier time convincing JxC to let him participate in their PASO under favourable conditions.

Whereas Milei has a much more ambitious (and crazy) goal: to unite the right wing of PRO, the remaining Federal Peronists and the various right wing provincial parties into a broad right of center coalition against both Kirchner and Larreta. Some of those he's mentioned include Patricia Bullrich, former Salta governor JM Urtubey, current Córdoba governor Juan Schiaretti and even ex-President Macri. If they somehow came together it would definitely be a major force with nationally recognized figures but having so many big heads could actually be a disadvantage. However much they might talk favourably of Milei to try to win his supporters, would the former President or the most notable Federal Peronist governor with presidential ambitions actually subordinate themselves to a wacky TV economist? My guess is not.

Nevertheless, he's already started travelling and generating press, with his first event in Formosa in support of a local libertarian leader arrested earlier in the year for protests that accused the local government of being dictatorial. This accusation was swiftly disproven when a kid that was at the event was identified and received a threatening friendly call from his teacher: "Gildo te tiene controlado, si fuiste a joder con ese Milei, perdiste"

Oh and also the poll by poll results map updated for the general election is up. Shoutout to station "Escuela N°05 Roberto Billinghurst" in Parque Avellaneda for being the only one where Milei won more votes than Vidal.

Can you elaborate more on the differences between Larreta and Macri?