Argentina’s Political Hegemony Crumbles In The Face Of Primaries

Over the past several years, Argentina’s political system has managed a sort of equilibrium state, despite a constant sense of crisis. Since the 2001 implosion of the socio-political-economic fabric of the country, an antagonistic group made up of Peronists and Kirchnerites on the one hand, and anti-Peronists and Radicals on the other, has controlled the political scene. That circumstance went in line with the general make-up of the political spectrum at least since the return of democracy in 1983, with Peronists managing to maintain a hegemonic state for long durations and the opposition, be it in the form of the Radicals or Mauricio Macri’s Cambiemos coalition, leading to moments of turbulence after auspicious beginnings. Over the past decade, the current iteration of that antagonistic struggle has been expressed by a bi-coalitionism that until recently pitted the pan-Peronist Frente de Todos — rebranded for this election as “Unión por la Patria” or “United for the Homeland” — against Juntos por el Cambio, a center-right coalition that had annexed the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR).

The failure of the Alberto Fernández-Cristina Fernández de Kirchner administration looked to have almost guaranteed a victory for Juntos por el Cambio, but the sudden emergence of a third alternative that sits to their right and channels voters’ anger on both sides of the aisle has shocked the system. Ultra-libertarian economist Javier Milei has dragged the political system toward the edges, essentially fracturing Juntos por el Cambio with the coalition’s hawks and doves battling it out for supremacy. The failure of a Peronist government has also seen some of the disillusioned move toward Milei in what appears to be a remake of the 2001 sentiment that the whole political class was to blame for the disastrous state of the nation. This has created a fracture within the pan-Peronist coalition between moderates and hardliners, the latter under the wing of Vice-President Fernández de Kirchner. In this context Argentina faces massive uncertainty going into a primary election that, for the first time, is testing the strength of both coalitions while potentially giving an advantage to Milei, who could be set to emerge as the single most voted-for individual candidate which, despite reflecting an incomplete read of the vote given a higher expected tally for the coalitions, could give him a boost going into the actual election.