The president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, during a rally for the legislative elections, on August 31, in Buenos Aires. DPA via Europa Press / Europa Press
A tough battle awaits the government of the Peronist Alberto Fernández this Sunday, when the parties will settle their internal differences in primary, open, simultaneous and mandatory elections (PASO).
According to the latest polls, the government candidates will obtain a narrow victory at the national level, but will lose by the minimum in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina's main electoral stronghold, and by beating in the capital.
The PASOs are a preview of the legislative elections of November 14, and their obligatory and open nature makes them a national poll of decisive influence in the final race.
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On Sunday, the parties will choose the candidates who will aspire to a seat in Congress.
In November, half of the Chamber of Deputies (127 seats) and a third of the Senate (24 seats) are renewed.
Peronism appears united in the Frente de Todos, with single ballots in most of the 24 districts.
The opponent Together for Change, of former President Mauricio Macri, presents up to six offers in the same province.
The dispersion of the vote will remove muscle from the opposition result, while the Government has bet everything on the strength of a united Peronism.
Midterm elections in Argentina are often a tough test for the ruling party. Thus, an average of polls give the Government 31% of the national votes, against 29% of the opposition. But that global triumph will be clouded by a defeat in the province of Buenos Aires, where the Peronist candidate, Victoria Tolosa Paz, would fall to the three Juntos por el Cambio candidates by one point; and by a blow in the capital, bastion of macrismo, where the two candidates of Together for Change would get more than 20 points of advantage. The result is binding on the parties, which, according to the result of each internal current, will draw the ballot that will be in the dark rooms in November. The STEP also serve to refine the number of candidates: those who do not exceed 1,5% of the votes are out of the race before the start.
What the polls make clear is that Argentina maintains the two great blocs that dominate national politics since the return to democracy in 1983. On the one hand, Peronism, now in column behind a Kirchnerism that has formed a front with left-wing parties , unions and social movements. On the other, an alliance of the center and center-right parties that was a government with Mauricio Macri between 2015 and 2019. In that alliance there are traditional liberals, old-school Peronists and leaders of the Radical Civic Union, a centenary and eternal party A counterweight to the Peronism that was a government under Raúl Alfonsín in 1983 and under Fernando De la Rúa between 1999 and 2001.
Outside of the two great blocks it remains to count the extreme left, which will add around 4% of the votes, and the novelty of an urban extreme right that has penetrated among the youngest with calls to end "with the political caste."
This option, represented by the economist Javier Milei, could be the great electoral surprise of the city of Buenos Aires, with a volume of votes that oscillates between 9 and 11%.
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On Monday, the Government and the opposition will not be able to count legislators, because it is only a primary, but they will use the results to measure the dimension of the challenge that awaits them.
The last STEP were held in August 2019, when Alberto Fernández obtained 47.6% of the votes compared to 32% for Mauricio Macri, who aspired to re-election.
The evidence that Kirchnerism would win the general elections in October, as it finally happened, de facto anticipated the Macri presidency, which from that electoral August was limited to managing an accelerating economic crisis.
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