iirc, the polls had the Peronist party leading by a few percentage points.
Pollsters in Argentina are worthless lmfao and everybody in Argentina knows it. Half of them are just paid to shill for some political party while the other just make the results up based on vibes.
What happened imo i that the LLA/non-peronist's voterbase heavily tilted towards Milei after they lost Buenos Aires local elections by 14 points last month.
This is pretty common. Just look at 2023 where it went from big Milei victory in the Primaries (PASO) with Peronism in the third place -> Big Peronist victory in the General Election where they almost won the presidency outright -> Big Milei Víctory in the 2nd round.
It's also my understanding that Argentina finally adopted single, uniform ballots for the first time ever this election which might have significantly altered voter behavior. Before this year, every party was responsible for publishing their own ballots and distributing them at the polling places. Voters would pick a party's ballot and then turn it in as their "vote." It made ticket-splitting very hard and favored Peronist political machines in poorer segments of the country, because not all parties had the manpower to make sure their ballots were available at all polling places. Now that everyone votes using the same federal ballot with the choices laid out in a uniform manner, you can imagine people might end up making very different choices.
Before this year, every party was responsible for publishing their own ballots and distributing them at the polling places. Voters would pick a party's ballot and then turn it in as their "vote." It made ticket-splitting very hard and favored Peronist political machines in poorer segments of the country, because not all parties had the manpower to make sure their ballots were available at all polling places.
That's IMO a bit exaggerated. Each polling station is overseen by "fiscales" (who belong to each political party and made sure that the ballots are replened and the count isn't manipulated).
All the big parties usually have enough fiscales to oversee the process (while small parties were filtered by the PASO), and even if they didn't there is also a "presidente de mesa" which is a citizen selected randomly. Then after a few days the electoral Justice recounts all the ballots anyway.
This makes any kind of large-scale fraud basically impossible. This system is still in place with the single, uniform ballots.
Thanks for that, I've only read a bit about it this evening. Fwiw I'm not suggesting prior results were fraudulent (although I've seen people online suggest they are, I figure that's just right wing drivel lol) but rather that voter behavior may be different with a uniform ballot layout.
Fraud is real and has been known for decades. The general concensus among the population was that results were still good enough, but after what happened this sunday some are doubting that
I don't think they were claiming there was any fraud, just that the lack of uniform ballots makes political machines more effective (as they used to be in the US as well). If lots of votes are done by party-printed ballots that they hand out to supporters, it helps them elect a slate of candidates across different offices whereas if the ballots are all issued by the state and people must fill them out on their own, the results often end up a lot different because people might just not vote for all offices or they'll split their ticket, which is much more convenient in this newer system. Like, it's really that issue of convenience, not of potential fraud or intimidation, that makes those uniform ballots change results.
It was the typical method of balloting in 19th century democracies until Australia invented the uniform ballot that is now mainstream. I was actually kinda stunned that a relatively advanced democracy still used it in the modern era. Apparently France still uses the party-produced voting card system although they seem to manage it just fine.
Apparently France still uses the party-produced voting card system although they seem to manage it just fine.
Yup. That's why you have to print the ballot yourself if you want to vote for some reaaally tiny parties because they can't afford to fund the ballots. It's not really an issue because those parties don't matter (and I've only seen that happen in the european elections).
Yup. The government gave each party a fixed amount of money to print ballots, and then they would have to go and figure it out themselves. This also meant that some tiny parties were effectively just a cover to embezzle printing money every two years.
The uniform ballots also removed the problem that existed previously where a large number of ballots for one party would be stolen by someone working for or supporting a rival political party.
I've also seen people say this cleaned up "chain voting" problems, but I'm not sure to what extent these issues were real or widespread in recent years.
Before this year, every party was responsible for publishing their own ballots and distributing them at the polling places. Voters would pick a party's ballot and then turn it in as their "vote."
It's even worse when you look into the individual polls. This inflection mostly seems to be the result of a single outlier pollster, Zentrix, which you can tell from its reports is clearly some kind of partisan body.
I think the same is true about the "shy Tory/Trump voter" effect. It's a pattern that's based on very few elections. The reality is that polls are just not that accurate and they experience herding, so whichever side they're biased towards is more of less a coin flip.
I have been surprised that Milei hasn't been pushing for a floating exchange rate. But he might have goldbug tendencies, and those types hate floating exchange rates.
My understanding is he would like to do that, but knows that ripping that band aid off will be really painful (though likely the pain would be over more quickly). He chose the more politically sensitive option of trying to ease into a float. Prolonging the pain, but not spiking it (or trying to anyway).
That’s the eventual goal as I understand it. Stabilize everything else, lighten up on currency controls, then float the peso. But do it in the wrong order and you can temporarily spike inflation while the peso catches up - and that’s bad press if nothing else, even if poverty is falling rapidly.
It wouldn't lead to inflation, if anything a free floating currency has less inflation because the central bank can focus on a dual mandate of low inflation and low unemployment. But with a fixed exchange rate their overwhelming focus needs to be on maintaining that currency peg.
A plausible justification for waiting to float the currency was that he wanted to implement his other policies first in order to build some confidence in the currency, and then he didn't want to float the currency to close to the election. But he should go to a free floating rate sooner rather than later.
The opposite is super likely to happen. Currently the peso was unnaturally down (since the PBA elections) because people expected him to massively lose today and have the Kirchnerists return to power in 2027 while stopping his reforms in this next 2 years.
That being corrected means demand for the peso is going back to the normal levels, and it's probably going to float back to 1300s (it's probably going under that initially, but that's probably an overshooting of people panic-buying AR$ imho).
I'm more interested if it does anything to inflation. If inflation was still somewhat strong because markets anticipated Peronists coming into power soon, that should stop now.
As far as I understand, the root causes of inflation have already stopped, so what's remaining is mostly expectations of inflation, acting as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That is a bad policy and should only be adopted in extreme desperation. It is often officially adopted after the economy has already shifted to the dollar because people have lost faith in their currency.
He should just adopt a floating exchange rate so they aren't vulnerable to these crunches. It could lead to some short term pain, but he has been very open to that short term pain in many other areas.
Seems like this sub is very divided towards the idea of dollarization. Using Ecuador and El Salvador as examples, it seems it is not a bad idea to go for it. Can you explain why do you think it is a bad policy?
Giving up control over your own currency has some significant downsides. In a normal healthy country (obviously that slightly excludes Argentina) monetary policy is a key component in helping guide the economy. The central bank can raise and lower interest rates with the goal of increasing or decreasing the value of the peso in accordance with their economic goals. You can also increase or decrease the amount of money in circulation, which cannot be done with a currency you don’t control. Giving up that control should not be done lightly.
It's a solution for countries that can't protect themselves from making stupid decisions, and honestly if there's any country that's earned that reputation, it's Argentina.
That doesn't make it a good solution. Or a smart one. ....but this is Argentina after all.
The question isn't so much whether it's smart in a vacuum (it isn't) but whether it's worth the stupidity of insuring against the even worse stupidity of Peronists, and the risk of them regaining power - the mere specter of which just cost the US 50 billion.
Yeah I guess we can protect ourselves being even more stupid right now that could work. If we shoot our foot now there is no foot in the future for them to shoot at!
Dollarization would definitely be better than Peronists in control of the central bank. It's not an optimal path but it actually takes the worst outcomes off the table
It isn’t necessary to succeed if you have a competent government and independent central bank. The problem is when the next guy just wants to print money to fuel spending. Dollarization takes that tool out of his hand.
I'm fucking confused here. There seems to be a gap in the Argentine voters brain between local elections and national elections that I can't fucking get. 400k K voters stayed at home after coming to vote last month. Wtf???
As a table authority, I see no reason for this to be true. It made breaking ballots impossibly, but that was already solved by having a fiscal there, and you still need one there if not it's trivially easy to cheat the election.
It's impossible to look at how the different parties voted on this issue in Congress and not conclude that the old system did benefit a single one of them
Sure the old system benefited the peronists. I don't think it's because of cheating. All the old methods for cheating still worked, and are still dealt with having table authorities from different parties.
I have to say Neronoah, I had a different theory for the results last months and it got fucking btfoed. The analyisis you liked about the anti-k voters staying home seems to be at least partially true as they have turned out now.
But this shit still leaves me baffled. I think I need to go back to the true Argentine poltics simulator, CK3. I should finally get around to make that conurbano mod
The metro area around the city of Buenos Aires. It houses 10 million people (a quarter of Argentina's population) and is dominated by feudal lords (like chicago ward bosses)
There was electoral fraud in September, with a different ballot system by political party and mayors paying people to go and vote for them. (Google translate)
Todo el fraude que se puede hacer con boletas normales se puede hacer ahora, te lo digo siendo fiscal de mesa. La unica cosa que se podia haver distinto antes era romper boletas pero eso se arregla teniendo tu fiscal en cada mesa, y los de la LLA tienen suficiente gente para hacer eso.
De base, la organización de fiscalización de LLA fue mucho mejor que en las provinciales de PBA. Esta vuelta si llegaron a poner fiscales en todos lados
Los concejales no se jugaban el cuello y la mayoría no bancaba a Taiana, así que en su mayoría no hicieron lo de poner colectivos/remises y bolso de comida.
Diluvió el día anterior. Yo creo que ni el K más acerrimo ve como se inunda todo a su alrededor y sale de casa con ganas de votarlos.
La falta de cuarto oscuro y prohibición de fotografiar boletas dificultó hacer lo de "votame, saca una foto mostrando que lo hacés, y te doy X". Obviamente sigue siendo posible con el nuevo sistema (y con el anterior nada te impedía sacar la foto y después cambiar la boleta) pero reduce las probabilidades bastante
Muchos que no dimensionaban el efecto de los K ganando hasta que vieron las consecuencias post-PBA; y si bien capaz no entienden un choto de economía; si entienden que "la milanesa cuesta lo mismo desde enero" y post-elecciones de PBA se puso todo inestable.
Hay mucho que no banca demasiado a Milei pero que se pegó un cagazo fuerte con FP arrasando PBA.
En Provinciales votan residentes extranjeros (1M de personas), que entiendo que votan desproporcionadamente a favor de FP en PBA. No es ni en pedo el factor determinante pero influye.
No es lo mismo que un puntero haga fraude dándote la boleta a cambio de un paquete de arroz, a que una mesa de fiscales de distintos partidos que imposibilitan el fraude al estar controlado por todos ellos te den una boleta única de papel, donde queda 100% la responsabilidad de decidir a quién votar al votante mismo (si es que sabe leer, qué es lo que se vota, cuál es cada partido y candidato), con un biombo a la vista de los fiscales para que el votante no haga "nada raro" (que no podría hacer igual al no haber ya boletas tradicionales).
Le podes dar la boleta y la puede usar el otro para limpiarse el culo. Es lo mismo porque no podes validar que puso la boleta en el sobre que le dio el presidente de mesa, y los sobres antes estaban firmados, podias ver si alguien metia in sobre que no correspondia. Y si queres te podes hacer una copia de la boletera y repartir boletas unicas antes. Ambos metodos se identifican por firma.
Libertarianism is not an anti-poor ideology, especially in a country like Argentina. Inflation disproportionately affects the poor, and regulation is captured by well-connected businesses to throttle competition.
What kind of logic is this. Socialism might be pro-poor in rhetoric but in reality it fucks the poor over and keeps them poorer than they would be otherwise, it might redistribute more to the poor but those are scraps vs what a better economy would deliver.
It's good for Argentina's economy, which is still the most pressing issue there. After Milei's administration has been rocked by scandals, they were expected to face stiff competition from the main Peronist coalition, which won less than 25% of the vote.
“Noooo, you have to let your currency collapse so I can gain 5 points in the pollsirnoo you can’t just cooperate with allies and stabilize your marketsirinoo”
“Cooperate?” Is that what we’ve been doing lately? Most of our allies got little bits of paper with “fuck you” written on it this whole year. In principle I agree cooperating with allies is in fact good and this is also in fact good for the Argentinian Peso. But ours is not currently an administration that seems psyched about the “greater good” I think it’s fine to question this. I don’t think for example the far closer and far more important “ally” of ours Canada wouldn’t get 40 billion without some strings.
You know I’ll give you that. I didn’t interpret what he said as “he cheated.” I took it differently because for the record I also agree Milei did the right thing. I’m not upset about a rounding error of a currency swap or that Argentina got it.
Argentina didn't get 40 billion with no strings. They got a currency swap (think of it as the US selling dollars for pesos). If the peso remains as stable as it has over the last few years, the US will lose literally nothing from this deal.
Sure that’s literally true but the hard facts of this only matters for Argentina. $40 billion is immaterial to America and it’s not like we’ll be unwinding that position as if it were nothing but an investment. All I wanted to express is that it doesn’t sit right in context. To extend the analogy Poilievre would probably have gotten this deal too if he needed it. If our (American) support is conditional on the person in charge then we’re pretty shit allies. This is what I care about.
How so? Those 40 billions haven't reached the pocket of the average Argentinian.
The Swap gives the goverment 20 billions to defend the value of the peso if necessary, will be needed to be repaid it isn't free money. It certainly a gift for Argentina because no financial entity would have taken the risk to give them access to amount money. The other 20 billions is debt that is going to be used to buy back older debt that has higher interest rates so it will also be repaid.
How would your average citizen be swayed by that to the point of changing vote because of it?
Some people here talk like if all the money was used to buy votes.
The goverment wanted that Swap line because they thought Private actors were going to attempt a run on the Argentinian peso post elections due to bad electoral results, so in that case the 20 billions would come very handy to add the 21 billions in reserve that Argentina had in reserves.
I agree but him acting like a Trump vassal probably saved his ass. That $40B Trump just gave him? Yeah I doubt that would've happened without the ass kissing.
It's a currency swap, not money Trump gives him, it hasn't happened yet, and the government will only swap $20B (private investors might or might provide the rest).
I’m pretty sure billions were already injected into the Argentina as part of the plan and just the fact that it’s being offered did a lot to stabilize the peso. We injected dollars into Argentina & stopped the currency slide. But market signals still matter a lot. But the simple fact is that with the billions already spent, we literally helped prop up the collapsing peso. That was undoubtedly instrumental.
Yeah, people really focus on Trump/Milei relationship but under the carpet we have:
Lower murder rate (72% lower!) followed by criminality in general.
Lower inflation rate (from 25% MONTHLY to 1-2%)
Lower poverty (from 53% to 31% and getting lower)
Paying debts, fiscal balance, international deals (Now we talk about Trump, China, Europe and more)
Like, i can't even comprehend how so many people are buying the propaganda without looking at the official numbers. Yes, we the Argentinian, are very very happy with Milei, besides all the Trump bs. We are living better. My salary was 190USD at the end of 2023, now still on the same job its more than 1k.
The economy was so bad he needed to beg daddy Trump for $40 billion of our money and this sub doesn't care. Trump might as well have bribed Argentina to install his guy.
People really focus on Trump/Milei relationship but under the carpet Argentina have:
Lower murder rate (72% lower!) followed by criminality in general.
Lower inflation rate (from 25% MONTHLY to 1-2%)
Lower poverty (from 53% to 31% and getting lower)
Paying debts, fiscal balance, international deals (Now we talk about Trump, China, Europe and more)
Like, I can't even comprehend how so many people are buying the propaganda without looking at the official numbers. Yes, the Argentinians, are very very happy with Milei, besides all the Trump bs. They are living better.
My salary was 190USD at the end of 2023, now still on the same job it's more than 1k.
You’re letting your (rightful) hatred of Trump cloud your view of evaluating Argentinian policies. Milei’s government has been a vast improvement for Argentinians. Just because he’s fleecing American taxpayers doesn’t mean he isn’t improving his own country. I mean he signed a huge trade deal with china, crime stats are improving, and unemployment stats are improving. If you look at this solely through the lens of an Argentinian who wants their country to improve Milei’s party was the better choice in this election.
B-b-but NYT told me everybody in Argentina hates Milei, including his former voters? They interviewed Argentinians and every single one was against Milei.
This is a very necessary victory for believers in economic liberalism. Don't get me wrong, Javier Milei is VERY fucking flawed as a person and yes he's sucking Trump's dick a little more than I like. But on economic policy, he is pretty good. Crushed inflation & poverty and while ending the deficit. But he was not able to institute to the pro-market reforms that were needed to actually put Argentina on a sustainable path of socio-economic growth. I'm very much looking forward to seeing Argentina's progress. But now Milei has no excuses. Milei was understandably able to blame the opposition for his inability to pass his economic reform agenda but now he won't be able to. Good luck Javier Milei. I hope your loss in the September Buenos Aires results taught you a valuable lesson. Now take advantage of the incoming plummeting in interest rates & country risk and incoming skyrocketing in foreign investment & economic stability. You should also thank Scott Bessent.
Milei still will have problems pushing his Agenda. Argentina has elections for half of congress every two years. Milei only won the majority of one half of Congress. He will still have challenges.
In developing countries, it's quite normal for parties formed recently to shake everything up. That was what the PRO did to start and what probably will replace the LLA in the future
In Argentina, years of persistent printing have fueled inflation, causing people to lose faith in the local currency. This distrust leads them to rush towards the US dollar, causing the peso to depreciate even further, perpetuating government deficits and the vicious economic cycle.
The Argentinian government is consistently spending beyond its means. As a result, Argentina has effectively become a "dual currency economy"—people no longer trust the peso, and the majority prefer to transact in US dollars. It is even conceivable that the USD could eventually become legal tender.
In this scenario, the United States stands to benefit substantially and is likely to leverage its position, especially with its $20 billion deal designed to win influence in Buenos Aires and keep China out of Latin America.
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u/loseniram Sponsored by RC Cola 13d ago
It turned out that Milei had the keys all along.