Despite stumble, Argentina’s Trump-admiring opposition candidate Milei may still win | Opinion
While many are wondering how Argentina’s populist economy minister, Sergio Massa, could win the Oct. 22 first-round elections despite the country’s near 150% annual inflation rate and financial chaos, don’t jump to the conclusion that he will win the Nov. 19 runoff vote. If recent history is a guide, he may not.
Granted, Massa was the big surprise of the first round election, winning nearly 37% of the vote against most pollsters’ forecast. He will now run against eccentric libertarian right-winger Javier Milei, an admirer of former President Trump. Milei was the front-runner, but came in second with 30% of the vote.
Massa won thanks to a combination of massive pre-election government handouts, fear mongering and capitalizing on Milei’s politically unwise statements, such as when he called Argentina’s Pope Francis ”an imbecile.”
In the weeks and months before the first round vote, Massa handed out cash subsidies and tax breaks for millions of people, even if that will further accelerate Argentina’s sky-high inflation.
Massa gave away an estimated 12 new social subsidies in the last 45 days before the election, the daily La Nación reported. Even before the election, Argentina had 18.7 million people receiving government handouts, including pensioners, beneficiaries of social subsidies and public workers. By comparison, the country has only 6.2 million people working in the private sector.
At the same time, Massa — a smooth talker, who projected an image of calmness in stark opposition to Milei’s stridency — claimed that if Milei or another right-of-center candidate won, they would privatize public services, cut social subsidies and hurt the poor.
Days before the vote, the Massa campaign covered Buenos Aires with streets signs reading: “A train ticket under Massa: 56,23 pesos; a train ticket under Milei: 1,100 pesos.” While Milei had never promised such a hike in train tickets, the Massa campaign signs raised fears that he would privatize transportation, and that fares would soar.
Massa also benefited from major blunders by Milei, such as the right-wing candidate’s attacks on the Pope, his vow to close down the Central Bank and his statement calling the Argentine currency “excrement,” which critics said created panic in the market as people rushed to buy U.S. dollars.
But Milei’s biggest mistake was to opine about almost everything, instead of focusing on Massa’s most vulnerable point: the economy. Massa is not only responsible for Argentina’s economic policy, but he was appointed “super-minister” with significant extra powers when he took that cabinet job in mid-2022.
Still, Milei has a good chance of winning in November, if he stays on one message — the economy — while building bridges with the opposition and distancing himself from some of his most extravagant previous statements. In his election night speech, Milei promised to start his campaign for the second round “from scratch” and made an appeal to voters who supported other right-of-center candidates, but it’s unclear whether he will be able to control his mercurial personality.
Nearly 57% of Argentines voted for opposition candidates in the first round vote. While Massa has already vowed to shift to the center and form a “national unity government” in order to attract moderate voters, Milei is still best positioned to win the opposition vote.
There is a recent precedent that bodes well for Milei. In 2015, government-backed Peronist candidate Daniel Scioli won the first round with 37% of the vote, roughly the same percentage as Massa now, while then-opposition candidate Mauricio Macri came in second with 34%. But Macri won the runoff vote, and was elected president.
Milei will have a good chance of winning if he becomes less arrogant, less incendiary, less authoritarian and less hostile to the media or anybody who dares to criticize him. In other words, less Trump-like.
And, more importantly, Milei can win if he focuses his campaign on the fact that Massa is the economy minister under whose leadership inflation has skyrocketed to a near world record, and poverty has risen to 40% of the population. If Argentines don’t buy that argument, Argentina won’t have just an economic problem, but a psychiatric one.
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