At 10:45 p.m. on Sunday, August 13, the head of Governor Axel Kicillof’s Advisors, Carlos “Carli” Bianco, publicly gave the provincial results according to the witness tables. The sample of those tables, Bianco said, proved its accuracy “in the last three elections.”
Bianco said that Axel Kicillof, with 34 percent, is the candidate with the most votes.
Together for Change was in second place with just over 30 percent of the total, adding Néstor Grindetti and Diego Santilli, the two candidates for Together for Change who fought head to head for the nomination in the Province.
He added that Carolina Piparo, from La Libertad Avanza, reached 22 percent.
Unión por la Patria at the provincial level declined to order ballot boxes because, according to the campaign strategists, they are not reliable even for the pollsters themselves.
That is why he resorted to his statistical sample of control tables, with data processed in the Unión por la Patria bunker in Chacarita.
Kicillof surpassed Sergio Massa’s numbers, presumably due to the vote of foreigners, who can vote at the provincial and municipal level but not at the national level. The work of the team led by the Minister of Government, Cristina Álvarez Rodríguez, achieved the registration of almost a million foreigners eligible to vote, especially Paraguayans, Bolivians and Peruvians.
There will be room to spin finer points, and find out if, in addition to the foreign vote, there was some level of ballot cutoffs in the districts, especially those in the suburbs, but the series of elections is similar to a soccer championship. With the results as they were at 11:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 13, the position table is defined but the future is not sung.
Still, there are some important pointers. In La Matanza, the most populated district of the Province, the difference between Unión por la Patria and the second forces, both La Libertad Avanza and Together for Change, was around 20 points. It is half the difference that Peronism obtained in the 2019 elections. It is very similar to the results of the 2021 parliamentarians, with the novelty of the weight that La Libertad Avanza achieved. It will be necessary to know if because of the appearance of his figure on the ballots or because of the help of El Dipy, the singer he designated as a candidate for mayor. The difference in favor of Peronism was also reduced in another of the large districts of the Third Electoral Section, Lomas de Zamora, where Unión por la Patria was far from the 2019 figures.
Beyond the polls, those who teach in the large suburban districts had been observing at least sympathy, and sometimes militancy, in favor of Milei even in popular neighborhoods, corresponding to tables where Peronism used to win by more than 50 percent.
If instead of STEP these same numbers had been from general elections, in the province of Buenos Aires the result would have been the election of Axel Kicillof as governor, very few points behind his second, the candidate of Together for Change. Carolina Píparo, Javier Milei’s pupil, appointed at the last moment when the mayor of Chivilcoy rejected the candidacy, would have been left out of the game.
It must be remembered that in the province of Buenos Aires there is no second round for provincial authorities (Executive or Legislative) and neither for the equivalent branches at the municipal level. The one with one more vote wins.
It should also be taken into account that the people of Buenos Aires do not have a tradition of cutting the ticket. At the impression level, anyone who has voted yesterday at a table in Greater Buenos Aires will have seen that there were no loose pieces of paper. Available were the kilometric ballots for each party, 93 centimeters between Sergio Massa and the applicants for school counselors.
The blocking of the ballot was only significant in 2015, when María Eugenia Vidal launched a systematic campaign, with the collaboration of a part of the Church, to complement the lie that linked the Peronist candidate Aníbal Fernández with a detainee for drug trafficking. That defeat was helped by the self-destructive inmate starring Fernández and Julián Domínguez and sponsored at the time by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
Buenos Aires/12 readers will surely be surprised by Milei’s less than average performance. This newspaper never underestimated the phenomenon of the man who wants to pulverize the Central Bank and free up the organ trade, and published several investigations into why Milei was in tune not only with the middle sectors but also with a part of the popular ones in Buenos Aires. In part, as is well known, he channeled the general rejection by the political leadership. But the intention to vote went beyond anti-politics. Even his dollarization proposal generated illusions. Not in technical terms of macroeconomics, without a doubt, but as a message that would translate like this: “You earn in pesos and it’s not enough, that is, pesos are useless, and that’s why I propose that you earn in a strong currency.” , the dollar”.
Consultant Shila Vilker, from Trespuntozero, said that “voters invest Milei with different attributes or intentions or directions according to their own wishes.” Hugo Haime detected that she “began working on young people and the lower-middle sectors, and later her message penetrated more marginalized groups and those over 30 years of age.” At the beginning of April Hugo Bacman already gave Milei in the Province a floor of around 23 percent, and growing. “Economic concerns at this time are superfluous because inflation does not subside and the distributive bid is also present,” said Bacman.
What has been read up to here serves to speculate, one of the busiest verbs on election days, but it is not conclusive. And it is not because they actually voted for Open, Simultaneous and Mandatory Primaries and not in elections with binding power. However, the PASO did not work since it existed not only as a gigantic and reliable poll, the only reliable one, but as a preparation for the first round and eventually the ballotage, which does exist at the national level.
In the train of speculating, it is appropriate to suggest that the path of the intention to vote for Milei in the Nation and in the Province will have to be followed day by day.
If Milei’s voters want to strengthen their candidate’s parliamentary presence, they will vote for La Libertad Avanza in October.
If they think that Milei can advance and leave Peronism third, to go to a ballotage between Bullirch’s extreme right and Milei’s extreme right, they will also insist on the PASO vote.
If this is maintained, several scenarios remain open at the Buenos Aires level:
- One is that his candidate for governor Carolina Píparo advance together with Milei, given that in any case the useful anti-Peronist vote would be relegated to the November ballotage.
- Another is that Juntos por el Cambio advances in a sensitive way, capturing thousands of votes.
- And yet another scenario would be the consolidation of Kicillof as head of the first minority thanks to the plausible fight between Together for Change and La Libertad Avanza without one force liquidating the other.
Beyond these probabilities and their infinite variations, one thing is certain: there will be a significantly greater presence of the extreme right and the extreme right in legislative spheres, certainly at the provincial level but also at the municipal level. It is not a joke if the trend is transferred to the municipalities, because the regime is quasi-parliamentary: with one councilor less, a mayor can lose control of the municipality in a three-second session.
