On Sunday, only 53% of the electorate attended the polls in the legislative elections of the city of Buenos Aires. An rate of historical abstention in the trajectory of elections of the Argentine capital, where the vote is mandatory as in the rest of the country. The result showed the disinterest of those who did not vote for the electoral process. The election was summoned to renew half of the city’s legislature, but Argentine President Javier Milei sought to nationalize the dispute climbing on his candidate’s stage, the presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni.
Of the 17 lists of candidates, only five got enough votes to elect the councilor equivalent. Adorni of the Freedom Party advances (LLA), received 30.13%of the vote and his opponents, Leandro Santoro, from ‘è Buenos Aires’, 27.35%, and Silvia Lospenato, macrism, only 15.93%. The president’s candidate won in much of the city and Macrism was not victorious in any commune (administrative distribution of Buenos Aires). It was the worst result for the party of former President Mauricio Macri, the Pro, who has been governor for almost 20 years.
Milei celebrated the result on Sunday night as a devastating victory. “The violet color won the yellow color,” he said. Yellow is the color of the Pro party, founded by former President Mauricio Macri, appointed by Milei as defeated and also outdated. In an interview, Milei suggested that Macri is getting out of politics. “The moment (from Macri) has passed,” he said. The former president supported Milei in the second round of the presidential election, but the two have been publicly exchanged for months.
The Argentine electoral calendar was fragmented during the year. In September, legislative elections will be held in the province of Buenos Aires, the largest in the country, and in October there will be elections to renew part of the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate.
Milei has attracted macrism politicians to her party, but analysts understand that her goal is to strengthen her legend and still weaken opponent Kirchnerism, who supported Santoro in Sunday’s election.
Political disputes, however, do not seem attractive to at least part of the electorate. And, in practice, it was because it didn’t believe that the vote to renew half the City Council would change something in its lives that almost half of the electorate did not attend the polls on Sunday. The question now is to know what voters’ behavior will be in this year’s upcoming elections – a challenge for Argentine democracy that Argentines took so long to regain after the 1976 to 1983 military dictatorship.