Argentina 2023 election

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

The Supreme Court has suspended the elections for governor in San Juan and Tucumán, which were meant to be this Sunday, until the local courts rule if the current governors can legally run again, due to some issues with term limits

The Supreme Court has ruled that Uñac, governor of San Juan since 2015, and deputy governor for the term before that, is barred from running for governor, as he would be violating the term limits set by the province's own constitution

There's a third similar case headed towards the Supreme Court, this time about the Gildo Insfran's chances, as he's been governor of Formosa (one of the poorest provinces and the one that reliea the most on government funds) since 1995 due to the local constitution's lack of term limits

[Bilardista]

Another Sunday of provincial elections is upon us. The two most important are the following:

Tucumán

It's a poor province in the north, and a peronist stronghold. But the last few years of their rule have been marred with infighting: in 2003 José Alperovich was elected governor and went on to serve three terms (the last one thanks to a constitutional ammendment). He was then succeded in 2015 by his vicegovernor and then ally Juan Manzur, who was reelected in 2019. Once in power, Manzur was quick to sideline Alperovich (much like the latter had done to his own predecessor Julio Miranda), but as the governor neared the end of his second term, tensions with his vicegovernor Osvaldo Jaldo began to surface.

Jaldo saw himself as the natural succesor, but feared that Manzur would try some kind of scheme to stay in power longer like Alperovich had done. Meanwhile Manzur feared that Jaldo would betray him once elected, as it's become a tradition at this point. So the relationship soured, and when in early 2021 Jaldo, as head of the legislature, appointed his own ombudsman instead of the one nominated by Manzur, all out war broke between them. Manzur purged his cabinet of any jaldist minister and Jaldo took sole control of the legislature with support of most peronist legislators. Later that year a truce was reached with mediation from the national government, and the two men agreed to run together (again) this year, this time switching roles with Manzur as Jaldo's vicegovernor.

But this went against the provincial constitution (which allows a maximum of four continuous terms as governor and vicegovernor), so, after an unnecessarily dramatic intervention from the supreme court, Manzur was barred from runing. He chose a loyalist to replace him, but the damage is done, as vicegovernor Manzur could have stoped Jaldo from taking full control, now he's left in weaker position to resist his succesor's inevitable rise as leader of Tucuman's peronism.

All this internal drama isn't great for winning elections, but the PJ hasn't lost an election since 1995 and this doesn't seem likely to change. The opposition has had their own drama, with their two main candidates, radical Roberto Sanchez and peronist German Alfaro, agreeing at the last moment not to run separately and to share the ticket "Sanchez-Alfaro". A strong one at that, they're the mayors of the two main cities in the province, one from the north and the other from the south. But even then, i doubt they can challenge the peronist machine which has been going for over two decades at this point.

San Luis

In 1983 a young peronist called Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, whose family had produced something like 9 or 10 governors in the XIX and early XX century (San Luis politics were always dominated by families more than parties), became governor himself and went on to win another four consecutive terms. In 2001 he made the jump to national politics and was succeded by his younger brother Alberto, who served another 16 years between 2003-2011 and 2015-2023. The two brothers always acted like a team and that partnership seemed nigh invincible (in 2003 Alberto won with 90% of the vote). They had complete control over state resources and were far more popular than any opposition thay had. Any challenge to them would have to come from within, and so it did.

After term limits were introduced in 2006, Claudio Poggi, a man close to and trusted by the brothers was chosen to run and won in 2011. But when he showed interest in runing again in 2015, his ambition was cut short and he was forced to desist. Resentful about this, a year later he switched sides to the opposition, of which he quickly became it's leader. And this year he added a valuable ally.

Sometime after the 2017 midterms a fight between the two brothers broke out. I wasn't able to find out what exactly caused it, but it seems like it was some personal issues that quickly scalated and it culminated in Alberto taking sole control of the PJ and expeling Adolfo and his supporters from the party. Resentful about this, he challenged his brother in the 2019 election, where the two siblings as well as Poggi all ran. Alberto won with 43%, followed by Poggi at 33% and Adolfo with 22%.

But now Alberto isn't runing, and his candidate to succeed him, Jorge "gato" Fernández, is an unknown mayor of a small town chosen mainly for his loyalty. Meanwhile Poggi not only is running, he got the endorsement of Adolfo. Fernández has the benefit of the whole peronist machine behind him (a formidable force indeed), but Poggi has built a lot of support of his own and is far ahead in terms of name recognition. The concensus is that it could go either way, the most competitive election since i think 1983. And one thing is certain: for the first time in many decades the name "Rodríguez Saá" won't be in the ballots.


There's also the legislative midterms in Corrientes and the primaries in Mendoza, but i don't think they're interesting enough to do a post about. I'll try to comment on them with the results in hand though. I'll also see to do a post on the national election later when i have more time, there's a lot of drama going on in that front.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

The national government won in only one of the two provinces they could've realistically won yesterday with Poggi winning over Alberto R. Saa's candidate in San Luis

San Luis - 77% of the votes counted
Claudio Poggi (Cambia San Luis) 54.43%
Jorge Fernández (Unión por San Luis) 44.44%
Slightly simplifying as they use they "ley de lemas" primary system, but no other candidates from the main coalitions got a remotely significant portion of the votes


Tucumán - 80% counted
Osvaldo Jaldo (Frente de Todos) 56.53%
Roberto Sánchez (JxC) 36.85%
Ricardo Bussi (Fuerza Republicana) 3.95%
The hardline conservative Bussi is by far the main loser in this election, as he had gotten almost 14% in 2019, despite moving from being an ally of the irrelevant Gomez Centurión to one of Milei's people

Mendoza - 98.8% counted (Primaries)
Cambia Mendoza (JxC): 44.1%
 -Alfredo Cornejo (UCR): 26.7%
 -Luis Petri (UCR): 17.4%
Omar De Marchi (La Unión Mendocina) 20.27% (JxC dissidents, largely from Pro, and Milei's LLA)
Elegí Mendoza (Todos): 15.9% split between 4 candidates
Mario Vadillo (Partido Verde) 4.5%
FIT: 3.9% between their 2 candidates
Needless to say this in an attrocious result for the government even for one of the most antikirchnerista provinces

The ruling ECO (JxC) coalition won the midterm legislative elections in Corrientes by a large margin, as they tend to do, getting 67% against Todos' 26% with 75% of the votes counted


On other news, Victoria Tolosa Paz launched her run for governor of Buenos Aires as the candidate of the Albertista wing (?) of Todos and she'll be running in the primaries against Cristina's pick, presumably the incumbent Axel Kicillof

On the national level, Larreta, the UCR, Carrió's Coalición Cívica and Pichetto support expanding JxC to include Espert (who has already been admitted into the coalition) and a bit more controversially, Schiaretti , while Bullrich and other Pro hawks, as well as Luis Juez, have been opposed to it

And Rossi's bid to the presidency seems  to be going nowhere already, as Alberto F has already turned his support more clearly towards Scioli and Rossi himself is making defeatist sounding statements along the lines of "I'll end my campaign if I poll poorly enough"

[Bilardista]

Historic result in San Luis. And with both of the Rodríguez  Saá brothers hinting that they'll retire, it could be the end of an era. Not much to say about Tucumán or Corrientes, the results were to be expected, but the result in Mendoza is notable for how badly the PJ performed. They used to regularly get ~40%, now they might be lucky to reach 20%. Seems like all but the core peronist base voted for De Marchi, wether for strategic reasons or because they're fed up with the peronist leadership and it's incompetence i don't know, but they hit rock bottom.

Everyone had something to celebrate last night. Except Milei, his candidate in Tucumán did terribly, but he's said he's only focused in the presidential race and nothing else, so he might not care that much.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

Today's the last day for the coalitions to register their memeber parties, and the full lists of candidates for the primaries have to be presented before June 24

Not that any of these newa are particularly big anyway, but:

Schiaretti has finally announced that he will run outside of both the JxC primary and the now dead Urtubey-Schiaretti "federal peronism" primary and will lead his own coalition, Hacemos por Nuestro País, formed by a few regional peronista parties and the remains of the Massa and Lavagna alliances (Partido Socialista, Partido Demócrata Cristiano) and the Partido Autonomista

Frente de Todos will be formally replaced by its successor, Unidos por la Patria (UP)  as they're apparently unable to keep their current name for more than a couple of elections in a row , while JxC will keep its current denomination

Milei is now without a candidate for Governor of Buenos Aires and he'll have to find a new candidate in the span of this week, as Gustavo Britos, the mayor of the rural county of Chivilcoy, (who had nevrr been all that convinced by Milei's seemingly unilateral declaration of his candidacy) has declined the offer

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

Despite some Kirchnerists crowing over their victories they really aren't a great sign for the prospects of the government. Their share of the vote has fallen basically everywhere (except Tucumán for some reason), even in their strongholds like La Rioja and La Pampa. In the provinces they don't govern the collapse is even more precipitous, going from 43% to 30% (-13) in Jujuy
while in Mendoza they went from 36% to 16% (-20).

The only path opened by narrow majorities in the most Peronist of provinces and no votes anywhere else is the path to a crushing defeat. Changing their name to "Unión por la Plata" won't change the underlying reality.

[PSOL]

I feel like these staggered local elections are adding into a death by a thousand cuts faced by FdT. Loss after loss, decline after decline, all this is probably doing serious damage to morale for election staff who see their own alliance as under threat. Once FdT loses national control there will be no reason to continue aligning with one another and that’s just going to feed in the loop of nonexistance.

If the non-K Peronist alliance loses steam too then that just leads to fighting for a smaller piece of the pie and more fragmentation. JxC will have to deal with FIT and Milei as their new enemies and I am not sure if they are ready for that. The absence of any Kirchner would probably leave them without reason to exist as well, which gives the question of who among the current blocs will split first and have a chance at power outside these grand alliances.

What I do know is that the next government will probably do electoral reform to at minimum get rid of PASO, at most create one grand local election, because this process is the death knell to any party in power.

[FredLindq]

In Tucuman there were two Peronist lists in 2019 so if you ad these two lists, FDT actually lost six percentage points.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

With 45% of the votes counted the incumbent governor of the northeastern province of Chaco, Jorge Capitanich (Frente Chaqueño/Todos) (2007-2015, 2019-2023) is currently losing the primary election to the combined result of JxC's two candidates, in an election marked by a much larger abstention rate than the usual for Chaco, of 48% against the usual 25%

This is in the context of the very recent murder of Cecilia Strzyzowski, presumably at the hands of her husband, and in laws Marcela Acuña, of the several competing candidates for mayor of the capital city of Resistencia for the Frente Chaqueño, and Emerenciano Sena, both of them closely tied to Capitanich

There's still a chance that Capitanich gets reelected for a fourth term in the actual elections, which will take place on 17 September, but he'll be an extremely weakened figure anyway

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

Update: with 93% of the votes counted, Capitanich is at only 36.8% of the votes, with most of the difference going to  minor parties

[jman123]

Cristina Kirchner endorses Wado de Pedro and VP candidate Juan Manzur. They will face Scioli in PASO.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

Patricia Bulrich anounced her VP candidate, Luis Petri (UCR), the second place candidate for governor in the recent the Cambia Mendoza primary and two term (2013-2021) congressman for Mendoza

There are rumors that the governor of Jujuy and one of the leaders of the UCR, Gerardo Morales could likely be Larreta's   VP, but this should be confirmed at the last minute, as Jujuy is going through some serious riots and protests related to the passage of a provincial constitutional reform, which hace been met with repression by the police

There's still no clear sign of who would be Scioli's vp candidate

[jman123]

Massa and VP Agustin Rossi will run for president under Union por la patria. Unity ticket

[Bilardista]

So, it's been just announced that De Pedro and Scioli agreed to drop out and Sergio Massa will be the sole candidate of UP, accompanied by Agustín Rossi. Surprised they snubbed Manzur, but honestly good for Rossi, that man has been nothing but a team player for years and never got any recognition.

Now let's see what Grabois does so my prediction is complete:

It's going to be Massa. Everyone else will drop out for the sake of unity, though Grabois could compete anyway outside of the FDT. A primary now just doesn't make any sense, they should all get behind a sacrificial lamb candidate, and minimize damage as much as they can.

Edit*

Grabois says he'll run in a primary against Massa
https://twitter.com/JuanGrabois/status/1672404011469684737?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogl...

[Bilardista]

Lmao, i hadn't seen this, but only 5 hours ago Grabois had droped out in support of Wado De Pedro:

https://twitter.com/JuanGrabois/status/1672327420563660803
Excelent timing

[PSOL]

In a hypothetical split, who would join with Grabois?

[Bilardista]

In a hypothetical split, who would join with Grabois?

Probably some of the other far left elements in the coalition, like Unidad Popular, Corriente Clasista y Combativa and the two or three communist parties affiliated to UP/FDT.

That's asuming he even meets the legal requirements to run.

[PSOL]

In a hypothetical split, who would join with Grabois?

Probably some of the other marginal far left elements in the coalition, like Unidad Popular, Corriente Clasista y Combativa and the two or three communist parties affiliated to UP/FDT.

That's asuming he even meets the legal requirements to run.

Do they have close relationships being apart of the coalition’s left or is this just grasping at straws?

[Bilardista]

 Claudio Lozano (Unidad Popular) said in a tweet he's discussing with other forces within the front what to do next, and that they'd be willing to leave UP if they're denied a primary. He didn't say which forces, but i suspect it's the ones i mentioned, plus some other very marginal groups like the trotskyist-peronists (yes, they're a thing) of "Partido Piquetero". Are these forces close to each other? Honestly i don't know, but if Grabois is serious about runing, those are the ones he should look at for support. Cause everyone else will fall in line behind Massa and the official lists.

[Bilardista]

The official lists for president:

Unión por la Patria   

• Sergio Massa-Agustín Rossi   
• Juan Grabois-Paula Abal Medina

Juntos por el Cambio

• Horacio Rodríguez Larreta-Gerardo Morales
• Patricia Bullrich-Luis Petri

   

Frente de Izquierda - Unidad   

• Myriam Bregman-Nicolás del Caño
• Gabriel Solano-Vilma Ripoll

La Libertad Avanza

• Javier Milei-Victoria Villarruel

Hacemos por Nuestro Pais

• Juan Schiaretti-Florencio Randazzo

There are others of course, but these are the ones most likely to make it to the general election.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

A few brief takeaways in no particular order:

* Massa being put in was clearly a last minute thing, jury's still out whether it came as a result of well placed phone calls from interior governors (the biggest winner of Peronist internal fighting so far) or because Massa threatened to resign and crash everything if he didn't get his way. The sudden swerve with little explanation or compensation makes the Kirchnerists look like chumps. Rossi, to my understanding, is more associated with the President than anyone else (the joke I see going around is that they were so desperate for a non-controversial VP that they picked the first guy to walk into Alberto's office) so they didn't even get the VP. Apparently they think giving PBA's first senate seat to WDP is enough to motivate them to turn out for the guy they threw everything at a decade ago, and maybe they're even right but they need all hands on deck to avoid either a crushing 1st round defeat or a third place finish. With minimal crossover from the other candidates it's basically mandatory for Massa to finish first in the PASO to avoid either disaster.

* The JxC lists produced by the complicated web of alliances have led to a ton of totally unexpected candidates for both Larreta and Bullrich. For example, Larreta's PBA senate candidates are Espert (?!) and Hotton (!?!?) while Bullrich's CABA list is headed by former Kirchnerist ballerina Maximiliano Guerra. Elisa Carrió suddenly dropped out to throw her support behind Larreta while Morales was integrated directly as veep so he's clearly pulling all the stops to have organizational superiority over Bullrich. While she may be the one who has policies and an attitude more in tune with the base it'll be hard to overcome Larreta's institutional support.

* I'll cover Milei's list later in its own post but his candidates basically all fall into three camps: economists/businessmen/professionals, political loyalists/personal friends and concessions to the parties in his alliance. There were a few controversial candidates, particularly from the third group, but considering the circumstances its clear Milei made minimal concessions in list construction. At least nationally, in provincial and municipal elections it could be a different story. Also apparently the accusations that there weren't enough women in his alliance triggered him into showing up to the big TN candidate announcement event like an anime harem protagonist:

https://twitter.com/agarra_pala/status/1672774354122285057

In other news, provincial elections in Formosa and Córdoba today. The impressively bad result from Capitanich in Chaco tempts me to downgrade Schiaretti from Likely to Tilt but since Schiaretti hasn't had any girls fed to pigs while using her phone to manipulate her family and covering up the scene of the crime with a spontaneous "road to nowhere" I think he'll probably be fine.

https://twitter.com/therealbuni/status/1671938878536646661

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

The elections in Córdoba have been the closest since 2007, in whixh Luis Juez was running against the incumbent De La Sota's succesor Schiaretti, during the latter's first run for governor
Unlike many other provinces, Cordoba doesn't have open primaries or senxond round voting, so unless something weird happens with the last 5% of the votes that haven't been counted yet, these are (pretty much) the final results, thus beginning Hacemos por Córdoba/Unión por Córdoba's 7th consecutive term

Martín Llaryora (PJ/Hacemos por Córdoba): 42.8%
Luis Juez (Frente Cívico/JxC): 39.8%
Aurelio García Elorrio (EVC - right-wing regionalists): 3%
Agustín Spaccesi (La Libertad Avanza - no official relation Milei's party of the same name): 2.5%
Liliana Olivero (FIT): 2.4%
Federico Alessandri(Creo en Córdoba de TODOS, ie UxP): 2.2% (lol)

OTOH, Hacemos poor performance had a much stronger effect in the legislative elections and they'll likely lose 17 seats, although it should be noted that JxC ran at least 3 lists in 2019

JxC 34<15
Hacemos: 32<49
La Libertad Avanza 1<0
Creo1<2(?)
(the kirchneristas didn't win any seats in 2019, but in February of last year two Hacemos legislators deffected and formed an Albertista block, Identidad Peronista)
FIT 1<2
EVC 1=1

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

In Formosa, the eternal incumbent Gildo Insfrán(PJ/UxP) won yet again, unsurprisingly getting to the 70-75% he's been getting in every gubernatorial election for the last 20 years when he consolidated the Formoseño PJ around him (as well as being helped by the collapae of the UCR after the 2001 events) after having been governor for 8 years already

Gildo(PJ): 71.2%
Fernado Carbajal (Frente Amplio Formoseño/JxC):20.4%
Francisco Paoltroni (Libertad, Trabajo y Progreso - broadly aligned with the opposition): 8.1%

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

The official lists for president:

Unión por la Patria   

• Sergio Massa-Agustín Rossi   
• Juan Grabois-Paula Abal Medina

Juntos por el Cambio

• Horacio Rodríguez Larreta-Gerardo Morales
• Patricia Bullrich-Luis Petri

   

Frente de Izquierda - Unidad   

• Myriam Bregman-Nicolás del Caño
• Gabriel Solano-Vilma Ripoll

La Libertad Avanza

• Javier Milei-Victoria Villarruel

Hacemos por Nuestro Pais

• Juan Schiaretti-Florencio Randazzo

There are others of course, but these are the ones most likely to make it to the general election.

Doing a follow-up on the minor (and let's be honest, generally irrelevant) candidates, due to their very minor status most of their VP candidates are just regular people

•Principios y Valores
This is the party you vote for when you want to vote almost exclusively for convicted former kirchnerista politicians and assorted corrupt weirdos
 -Guillermo Moreno - Leonardo Fabre
Led by Guillermo Moreno, the controversial (read: extremely corrupt and with the attitude of a mob boss) kircherista secretary of commerce (2006-2013), which is formally a fairly minor post, since then he's become a perennial candidate (after being one of the few politicians who've been informally expelled from the main kirchnerista alliance for being too shady and "piantavotos") and overall weird guy and general grifter, who's "trying" to restore kirchnerism to what it was before Cristina, and who's clearly in some sort of informal alliance with some sectors of the pro-opposition media
Fabre is the very anti-welfare leader of the ANSES (the National Social Security Agency, ie the state agency in charge of welfare), workers' union
• MIJD-Confederal
 -Santiago Cúneo - Gustavo Barranco
Cúneo is a hypernationalist TV presenter turned oddball politician (after being expelled for making antisemitic comments), constantly changing between being very kirchnerista and extremely antikirchnerista, his whole campaign is about being the "Argentinean Bukele"
 -Raúl Castells-Adriana Reinoso,
 Castells was one of the original piquetero leaders, and one of the few who wasn't closely linked to kirchnerism, the FIT or the big labor unions, since 2011, after losing relevant to the aforementioned groups he's been in a series of almost ideologically uncomprehensible alliances
•Política Obrera
 Marcelo Ramal - Patricia Urones, the ballot for trotskyist boomers
•Nuevo Más
 -Manuela Castañeira - Lucas Ruiz, tbh i can't tell you much about the differences between Nuevo Más and the MST, other than the fact that MST's leaders are a lot older than Castañeira

•Demos
  -Nazareno Etchepare - Fernando Lorenzo
  -Julio Barbaro - Ramona Pucheta
Etcheparre was an early key ally of Espert and  Milei, who for some reason now has a grudge against them, while Barbaro is a historic peronista referrent who hasn't been relevant in ages, but who's still beloved, and easily booked, by the media (which means he's on the news channels for approx. 15 hours every week for no apparent reason)
•Libres del Sur
  -Jesús Escobar - Marianella Lezama Hid, this is the first ballot so far where I genuinely never heard of any of them before, they're representing this small left-wing party on their first run outside of a larger coalition
•Frente Patriota Federal
 - César Biondini - Mariel Avendaño, led by the son of the reformed neonazi perennial candidate Alejandro Biondini, who's now in an alliance with some rump remains of Gomez Centurión's hardcore socially conservative NOS party
•Liber.ar
 -Pablo Gobbi-Julio Archet, no idea, I think they're a knockoff of Etchepare's wing of Demos (?), they're very much into crypto
•Paz, Democracia y Soberanía
 -Mempo Giardinelli - Bárbara Salernou
Some irrelevant economic nationalist left-wing list led by a former hardcore kirchnerista that somehow got the support of the Partido Humanista

[PSOL]

Why is PO running their own list for president instead of competing in the FIT primary?