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On August 13, Argentina holds the first of three rounds of elections, which will determine who will assume office as the country’s next president on December 10. The primary is formally a preparatory contest to decide who will be the presidential candidate of every party or alliance in the general election. However, the August 13 primary also will reveal the true support among Argentine voters enjoyed by the principal candidates and alliances in a way the country’s contradictory and oft-questioned public opinion surveys do not.
Argentina’s 2023 federal election calendar includes the August 13 primary election, the October 22 presidential and legislative elections, and a likely November 19 presidential runoff election. The Argentine primary election process is relatively unique in that participation is compulsory for all voters ages 18 to 69 (it is optional for those 16 and 17, and 70 and older), mandatory for all parties and alliances (even if they have only one presidential candidate), and simultaneous (all held on the same day and organized by the Argentine government). The August 13 results will provide five valuable pieces of information as we move toward the October general election.
The Juntos por el Cambio Presidential Primary
This primary will determine whether Patricia Bullrich or Horacio Rodríguez Larreta will be the presidential candidate of the principal opposition Juntos por el Cambio alliance (JxC). Both candidates belong to Propuesta Federal (PRO), the senior member of the JxC alliance, which also includes the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) and several smaller parties. Bullrich served as the Minister of Security for the JxC’s Mauricio Macri when he was president from 2015 to 2019, and Macri is informally backing her in the primary. Rodríguez Larreta has been the Chief Executive of the City of Buenos Aires (CABA) for the past eight years. Bullrich is widely perceived to be more conservative, more enthusiastic about dramatically changing the status quo in Argentina, and less open to negotiating and working with Peronists than Rodríguez Larreta. Whoever wins the JxC primary will be favored to become Argentina’s next president.
The Unión por la Patria Presidential Primary
This primary will determine the margin by which the current Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, captures the nomination of the governing Peronist Unión por la Patria (UP). The incumbent president, Alberto Fernández, is not seeking re-election, and former president (2007-2015) and current Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who also opted not to run, tapped Massa to be the UP’s standard bearer.
Massa assumed office as the “Super” Minister of Economy in August of 2022 and was able to prevent the country from experiencing a meltdown that could have resulted in hyperinflation, civil unrest, and political instability. While Massa stabilized the situation, he has been unable to resolve some of Argentina’s most pressing problems. These include inflation (currently at an annual rate of over 100 percent), sluggish economic growth (projected to be between 1 and -1 percent in 2023), and a currency crisis where the country’s reserves are nearly exhausted, imports are being heavily restricted, and the Argentine Peso’s official exchange rate vis-à-vis the U.S. Dollar is approximately half that in the informal market.
Massa will face off in the UP primary with a candidate from the Peronist Movement’s left wing, Juan Grabois, a social activist with close ties to Pope Francis from the Pope’s time working with impoverished communities in the Buenos Aires metro region. Massa will defeat Grabois, with the only question being his margin of victory.
A Voter Census of Individual Candidates and Alliance Support
The primaries together will reveal the overall level of voter support for the leading individual presidential candidates as well as for their alliances. There is a general public and elite distrust in Argentine polls due to the range of contradictory vote projections that have been released this cycle by different firms, the increasing difficulty faced by Argentine pollsters in getting people to respond to surveys (a global phenomenon), and the practice of some pollsters of publishing false results to aid or hurt a candidate.
The overall proportion of the vote won by three individual candidates will be especially important to gauge their core support heading into the general election campaign. First is the proportion won by the victor of the JxC primary (Bullrich or Rodríguez Larreta). Second is the proportion won by Massa. Third is the proportion won by the populist, right-wing, and anti-system candidate Javier Milei of Libertad Avanza. Also important will be the comparative vote proportions won by the two JxC candidates combined, the two UP candidates combined and Milei, which will provide an important baseline for what the October 22 results would look like assuming the victorious JxC and UP candidates are able to retain the lion’s share of their primary rival’s vote in October.
Minor Presidential Candidates and The Primary Threshold
In addition to the five mentioned top-tier candidates, there are an additional 21 presidential candidates from 12 alliances competing on August 13. Two-thirds (14) are competing within an alliance with multiple presidential candidates, while the other seven are their party or alliance’s sole candidate. In order to qualify to participate in the October 22 presidential election, a party or alliance must win at least 1.5 percent of the valid presidential vote on August 13.
Only three of these 12 other parties and alliances have a realistic prospect of crossing the 1.5 percent threshold. The most likely to cross is Hacemos por Nuestro País, whose presidential candidate is the Peronist governor of the Province of Córdoba, Juan Schiaretti. Next is the far-left Frente de Izquierda y los Trabajadores-Unidad (FIT-U), which has two candidates competing in its primary, national deputy Myriam Bregman and CABA legislator Gabriel Solano, with Bregman strongly favored to win. The alliance most at risk of not crossing the threshold is Principios y Valores, whose main presidential candidate (there are four other minor candidates) is Peronist Guillermo Moreno. Moreno was in charge of price controls during the Fernández de Kirchner administration. None of these candidates have any hope of victory, and the main impact of their presence on the October ballot would be to increase the already high probability of a November runoff.
Post-Primary Campaign Strategy
The outcome of the JxC primary will be highly consequential for the campaign strategies of both Massa and Milei. In Argentina, if no candidate in the first-round wins either 45 percent plus one of the vote or 40 percent of the vote with the second-place candidate trailing by 10 percent or more of the vote, then a runoff is held between the top two finishers. Unless the JxC, UP, or Milei craters between now and October, a runoff is a virtual certainty.
If the more moderate and consensual Rodríguez Larreta is the JxC standard bearer, both Massa and Milei will likely adopt a strategy of trying to push as many Bullrich primary voters as possible to vote for the more conservative Milei rather than, the more moderate Rodríguez Larreta, with the goal of keeping Rodríguez Larreta out of the November runoff. Massa would have a very difficult time defeating Rodríguez Larreta in a runoff but would be favored to defeat the extreme and erratic Milei in a second round. For Milei, his only route to the runoff and the presidency under this scenario would involve peeling off a substantial number of JxC voters who cast a ballot for Bullrich on August 13.
If the more hawkish and confrontational Bullrich is the JxC standard bearer, then Massa will likely adopt a strategy of contrasting his more centrist and flexible position on a wide range of issues with the more conservative and rigid positions of Bullrich, with the goal of trying to convince a majority of Argentines that Bullrich is “too extreme” for Argentina. A Bullrich primary victory would close the door on any hope Milei might have of making it to a runoff unless economic and social conditions deteriorate dramatically over the subsequent two months such that Massa’s candidacy becomes untenable—which is unlikely.
Politics and Government in 2024 and Beyond
Whoever is sworn in as Argentina’s next president on December 10 will face the herculean challenge of addressing the country’s myriad economic, political, and societal problems. It is a challenge that many Argentine presidents have faced but which none have successfully overcome. However, as hope springs eternal, it is always possible that a future presidency of Patricia Bullrich, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, or Sergio Massa will be the one to succeed where all others have failed. For Argentina’s sake, let’s pray that this is the case.
Mark P. Jones is the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies at Rice University. He also directs the Argentina Program and Master of Global Affairs Program and co-directs the Presidential Elections Program at Rice’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Jones has conducted research in Argentina since 1990 and has published more than 50 articles and book chapters on Argentine politics, government, and society.
