In his first real electoral test since sweeping to power in October 2023, the party of Argentina’s right-wing populist president, Javier Milei, has suffered a landslide defeat. The result can be read as an emphatic reminder of the remarkable endurance in Argentina of Peronism – the movement named after former president Juan Perón.
The ideology is grounded in the state taking a leading role in the economy through progressive policies to deliver social justice – the antithesis of Milei’s mission to cut the state down to size.
Elections in the province of Buenos Aires on September 7 left Milei’s Liberty Advances party on 34% of the vote with the various factions of the Peronist party (under the banner of Homeland Force Front) on 47.4%.
While it was essentially a provincial election, the contest took on a symbolism nationally. Milei himself had framed it as a life-or-death battle between his libertarian movement and the left-wing wealth redistrubutive politics of Peronism.
Since 2003, the movement has often been called Kirchnerism because of its association with Néstor Kirchner and his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Both were once president of the country representing the Peronist party.
Despite being barred from seeking public office due to corruption charges, Fernández de Kirchner continues to dominate left-wing progressive politics in Argentina. Before the vote in Buenos Aires province, Milei argued that it was a chance for voters to put the final nail in the coffin of Kirchnerism by backing his liberal policies.
This idea of putting an end to Kirchnerism is an interesting one. Speaking with an Argentinian academic friend after Milei’s 2023 victory – the biggest vote margin since the return to democracy in 1983 – my friend said: “Kirchnerismo is dead”. In his eyes, the scale of the defeat meant that politically it could not come back from it.
I disagreed, because social justice and wealth redistribution underpin Kirchnerist progressive policies. This is certainly polarising, but it maintains significant support. Kirchnerism has been the left-wing identity of the Peronist party since 2003, and the Peronist ideology is deeply embedded in Argentinian society.
The recent vote was Milei’s first litmus test since taking his “chainsaw” to the Argentinian state through his programme of deep austerity. The 13 percentage point loss was a clear rejection of his policies in the most populous province, which accounts for 40% of the Argentinian population.
And while Buenos Aires province is traditionally a Peronist stronghold, in 2023 Milei came within 1.5% of taking it, showing that his anti-establishment appeal had gained widespread support. But after less than two years in office, the political pendulum looks to be swinging back to the Left.
Página 12, a left-wing Kircherist newspaper, summed up this idea of the battle between two social and economic visions. Its headline, “Peronism had defeated the austerity and hunger of Milei”, pointed to the extreme spending cuts for which he is now infamous.