In Argentina, Peronism humbled by shock primaries

Almost exactly two years ago, in Argentina’s 2019 presidential primaries, a landslide win by challenger Alberto Fernández over then-President Mauricio Macri anticipated a shock to the country’s politics and economics. Now, the same seems to have happened in the 2021 midterm primaries, albeit in the opposite direction.

The center-right Juntos opposition coalition won a resounding, momentum-changing political victory yesterday, winning in a record-high 16 out of 24 provinces, including the five most populated. It also took a commanding 40 percent of the nationwide vote, against a historically low 30 percent from the ruling center-left Peronist coalition.

If these primary results are repeated at the November 14 midterms, Peronism would stand to lose control of Congress — an extremely rare sight given the party’s historical dominance over the Senate.

Argentina’s unusual voting system means that primaries are generally the best available predictor for any election’s final result, given that voting is mandatory for all citizens on both dates, and each person can cast a vote for any coalition, regardless of their political affiliation. As such, the September vote doesn’t function simply as a primary, but also as a giant, one-to-one scale poll with almost no sampling bias ahead of November’s elections.

Though changes in Congress will still need to be confirmed in November, Mr. Fernández already hinted about reforms to his administration in yesterday’s concession speech — though the direction of that change remains unclear. “Evidently there’s something we didn’t do right, and that’s why people didn’t back us. There are clearly...