2023-05-30 08:15:00
On the 25th, on the occasion of the public act headed by Cristina Kirchner In the Plaza de Mayo, testimonies of young attendees who, despite declaring themselves supporters of the current vice president of the Nation, confessed in front of television cameras that they would vote for Javier Miley if the former president did not stand as a candidate in the next presidential elections.
Not a few observers thought that it could be a media operation tending to favor the leader of Freedom Advances. However, in the opinion of public opinion analysts, we could be facing a rare phenomenon for which sociodemographic explanations can be found, especially in the universe of young men under 30 years of age. Also, in a portion of the electorate in search of a sort of hero who can solve their economic problems.
The striking viralized testimonies of young people who reported the eventual transfer of voters from the Frente de Todos to Milei did not surprise Lucas Romerodirector of the consultancy Synopsis. In this sense, this analyst considered that If today in Argentina young men under 30 years of age voted exclusively, Milei would be obtaining 47% of the votes and would win in the first electoral round.
If there is a segment of the electorate in which the libertarian leader makes a foothold, it is precisely that of the youth and that of men, to such an extent that the trend of support for Milei became two male votes for every female voteaccording to Romero.
for the sociologist Evangelina Perez Aramburu, it is not feasible to draw conclusions from a couple of attendees at a public event interviewed by a television channel. However, he observes that “if they were young men, they would have behaved quite logically” because Milei “captures votes in the lower sectors of Kirchnerism and one would have the presumption that the protesters in the Plaza de Mayo act are more typical of those sectors.
The transfer of votes from Kirchnerism to Milei is not too surprising considering that, in the last legislative elections in the city of Buenos Aires, the current presidential candidate of La Libertad Avanza carried out good electoral performances in the southern zone, such as Lugano, where Peronism has traditionally been strong.
How is it possible that a voter whose main alternative was a center-left candidate like Cristina Kirchner, change their preference to a leader identified with the right, like Milei? It happens that sometimes sophisticated categories that do not go through the heads of the majority tend to be transferred to the common citizenry.
Romero explains the phenomenon from the perspective of the results of a management: “We are in the final stage of an economic regime that dominated a cycle characterized by a State-centric hegemony, where the narrative and the climate of the time were defined by the State as the giver of goods and services and as a factor in solving people’s daily problems, and that vision has entered into crisis, producing a contrary reaction”.
According to the director of Synopsis, when political cycles end due to poor results, individuals may tend to embrace contrary ideas. “So they think that if it didn’t work with the State, they have to try without the State. This is how a speech like Milei’s begins to generate sympathy, which contrasts with that State-centric narrative. Probably people, dissatisfied with the results of the policies that have been offered, try to try something new, even if it is very contrasting with what they have been trying ”, he affirms.
Public opinion studies carried out by the consultant Jacob & Asociados They have shown for months that, when the population is consulted which of the presidential political leaders they consider most capable of solving problems such as the economy, inflation and poverty, the majority mention Milei. Faced with the economic problem, Milei is mentioned by 31.6%, ahead of Cristina Kirchner (21.4%) and Patricia Bullrich (14.2%). Faced with inflation, Milei is cited by 32.6%, surpassing Cristina Kirchner (21.5%) and Patricia Bullrich (13.4%). And in the face of poverty, he also favors Milei (26%) before Cristina Kirchner (22.2%) and Patricia Bullrich (19.9%). The rest of the potential candidates are located much further away in all those categories, in which -according to Jorge Jacob– Until 2019, the Frente de Todos received the confidence of the majority of voters.
The economic failure of the current Kirchner administration, with Alberto Fernández as president anointed by Cristina Kirchner, would then explain the first cluster of votes that allowed Milei to grow at the expense of ex-voters of the Frente de Todos.
Giacobbe mentioned that he is studying the vote of those under 30 who are located at low levels, both in the income pyramid and in education. His first conclusion is that within that population, there are three segments: one that is completely distanced from politics and disoriented, which represents 50%; the other half is divided almost equally between those who express preferences for the Frente de Todos and those who would support Milei, with the particularity of very striking inconsistencies. For example, many say that the best president of the last decades was Néstor Kirchner, but today they express their willingness to vote for Milei.
“What is happening to these people? That you need to buy a candidate who gives you the feeling that he is going to solve your financial problems. It does not matter if that solution is from the right or from the left, if it is with a large or small State and if it is with pesification or dollarization”, considers Jacob.
His conclusion is that this segment, which can change its electoral preference from Cristina Kirchner to Milei looking for “a hero” to solve their problems and personal dramas. In this sense, both Kirchnerism and Milei fish in the same place and place the same symbolic construction in the electoral gondola, even when one political force favors a conception of an interventionist and all-powerful State and the other force advocates a minimal State.
In a similar sense, Evangelina Pérez Aramburu points out that it is possible that, from her perception, both Cristina Kirchner and Milei share some characteristic related to a charismatic leadership style. “Both present themselves as great saviors of society, attributing to themselves exceptional qualities and promising great solutions to the problems and challenges facing our community,” she says.
“Many people are not in a position to assess which tool is the best, but simply see two political forces telling them that it will ease their pain,” adds Giacobbe. This situation challenges in a certain way to Together for Changesince in its main candidates, Patricia Bullrich y Horacio Rodriguez Larretaa clear proposal for this problem is still not visible in that public that Kirchnerism and Milei seem to be disputing today, and nor do they have an actor that represents that idea, the hero or heroine that that public seems to be looking for.
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