"What is the European Union?" and "What does it mean to leave the European Union?" The two questions topped Google searches in the UK the day after the Brexit referendum: just hours after voting to leave the EU, millions of Britons set out to find out what it was they had just chosen to leave behind, and what implications such a decision had.
Although many voices were already raised at that time warning of the consequences, many others preferred not to pay attention to them, allowing themselves to be tempted by emphatic slogans and bombastic proclamations, more enthusiastic than realistic and perhaps more irresponsible than based on valid reasons.
Brexit was presented as a way to improve the National Health Service (NHS), and control immigration, seven years later, according to analysts, the NHS works worse than it did, and immigration only changed origin: migrants do not now arrive from the European Union but from borders outside the bloc. Not to mention the economic problems.
According to a report published on Sunday by Clarín correspondent María Laura Avignolo, polls today show that 53% of Britons consider that Brexit was a mistake, and there is already talk of Begret, something like "repentant of Brexit". In June 2016, the decision to break with the EU won the referendum with 51.9% of the vote, compared to 48.1% who said against.
The result of that referendum had a lot to do with what experts call emotional vote, pushed in this case by nationalist and more conservative positions. Also characterized as angry vote, or punishment vote, it is usually a way of penalizing in the dark room a government management or a political class that, in the opinion of voters, has not been able to respond to their needs or expectations. It happened in Brexit, it happened in the election of Bolsonaro in Brazil, in that of Viktor Orban in Hungary, in that of Trump in the United States, in the recent constituent elections in Chile with the resounding triumph of the candidate Kast, whom the current president Gabriel Boric had soundly defeated in the general elections of December 2021.
When there are no elections on the near horizon, the angry vote can be replaced by massive demonstrations, cacerolazos, which apparently have also reached France, as part of the rejection of the law that raises the retirement age at the behest of President Emmanuel Macron, or proclamations of "Let them all go", as in December 2001.
Appeals to the most primal feelings, catchphrases, simplistic slogans, magical solutions to entrenched and long-standing problems, without explaining how they will be implemented or skipping the difficulties that the alleged "solution" implies, blows of effect and directly to the hearts of the voters, alleged unappealable truths, speeches that repeat what people want to hear. , even if it is the opposite of its true intentions. With brutal honesty, Menem did it, and confessed: "If I said what I was going to do, who was going to vote for me."
Increasingly devoid of ideas, and in many cases also of scruples, enlightened candidates emerge here and there, and find fertile ground in disenchanted societies, exhausted in the daily struggle for survival, metaphorical but also literal, fed up with corruption, inflation, unemployment, inequalities of all kinds, insecurity, and signatures follow. The worse the situation, the more room there is room for facile and providential speeches.
Political scientist, author of "The Crises of Democracy", Adam Przeworski, warns about another condition: polarization, the hostility it favors, and the conversion of an adversary into an enemy. And he explains that democracy can crack without violating constitutionality when a society applauds, or tolerates, authoritarian governments or leaders who seek to alter, from within, the functioning of institutions.
"We live in a time of strong partisan sentiments with weak parties," says another political scientist. Argentina 2023 offers a fertile breeding ground for the angry vote. The economic variables and skyrocketing indices, from crime to cost of living, added to the uncertainty provided by politics, result in other indicators, which ignite, or should turn on, the alarms.
The WIN Global Survey and the consulting firm Voices! concluded that Argentina is the Latin American country with the worst mood rating: 28% state that their mood is quite bad or bad. The 68% who rate it as good or fairly good contrasts with the 85% who defined it that way in 2018.
The survey of the Observatory of Applied Social Psychology of the UBA, last December, yielded some conclusions to look at carefully: in Argentina, they say, there was not the expected recovery of the emotional impact of the pandemic, which they attribute to the economic and social crisis. 54.5% of the participants said they were going through a crisis. Of these, 49.4% spoke of an economic crisis. Most had negative expectations, and a habit of living in crisis permanently. As one of those responsible for the work defined, "the crisis became the norm".
Meanwhile, politics, on both sides, is still immersed in its internal dalliances, playing to lower or raise candidacies, taking out their rags in the sun, engaged in friendly fire, and not so much. From the Government, Alberto Fernández criticizes Cristina Fernández, who in turn criticizes him. Both agree in pointing to Milei: the President speaks of the "energúmeno" and the vice, of "mamarracho" and "peliferous". The leader of La Libertad Avanza speaks of dollarization, pension cuts, free bearing of arms and restrictions on foreigners, insults left and right, points to "traitors" and insists on "the caste."
"Be careful what you wish for, you can get it," warned Oscar Wilde. To take into account when thinking about the vote.
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The Court and provincial elections
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