In recent Argentine democratic history, various “new” parties with the intention of challenging radicals and Peronists for primacy. In general they were called “third parties” and although they have had very diverse ideologies, they share many things in common.
In general, they arise from the City of Buenos Aires and/or its Metropolitan area (AMBA), are made known through the so-called “national media” and have had a hard time expanding to the rest of the provinces. At the same time, they have found main support among young people, especially from the middle classes and, thirdly, their programmatic and ideological positioning It has always been clearer and more defined than that of the PJ and the UCR.
In these forty years since the democratic restoration, the first was the Intransigent Party that grew in the eighties “to the left” of the two historical parties, in the same way that it did the UCeDe years later, but from the right. In the nineties that place was occupied, again from the left, by the Large Front/FRESTEP like the ARI, Alternative for a Republic of Equals, already in this century. In recent years it was the PRO that managed, in alliance with the radicals, to break Argentina’s historic two-party system and now La Libertad Avanza (LLA) of Javier Milei that achieved it alone, both from the right of the political spectrum.
LLA shares all the characteristics of third parties with one important exception: his political performance is much better away from the obelisk. In the primary elections on August 13, Milei and LLA won with almost 30% of the votes in the country, however, in the AMBA (City of Buenos Aires plus the suburbs) they came in third place, very far from the Frente de Everyone and Together for Change. In turn, in the general elections of October 23, Milei came second, again with 30% of the votes at the national level, while in the AMBA he finished third with only 25%. In any case, if only the inhabitants of our country voted metropolitan area there would have been no runoff since Sergio Massa would have won directly with 47%. Finally, in the second round Massa won again in the AMBA with 52% while Milei in the rest of the country obtained almost 60%.
These numbers somehow tell us that part of The explanation of the result may be in this geographical issue beyond the causes that we all know, that is, the succession of two mediocre governmentsmore than 10 years without growth, rising poverty and inflation, and the openly irresponsible internal affairs of the two main coalitions.
Possibly many Argentines got tired of the growing “ambacentrism“, sorry for the word, which Argentine politics has been taking over in recent years and which reached its peak in the pandemic when the health measures that were taken focused centrally on what was happening a few kilometers around the obelisk. Probably many citizens of the interior, disappointed by governments that did not improve their lives and engaged in endless internal and external discussions on issues absolutely distant from them, found in this Buenos Aires deputy not highly valued in their city the channel capable of expressing their discontent with the superporteño PRO and urbanized Peronism.
*By Juan Manuel Abal Medina.
by Juan Manuel Abal Medina
