The electoral contract that a large portion of Argentinians made with Javier Milei in 2023 was based, on one hand, on being as different as possible from those who had been governing, and on the other, on the promise to stabilize the economy. Public opinion studies from the last quarter of Alberto Fernández’s administration indicated that seven out of ten Argentinians wanted change. Focus groups went deeper into that trend, revealing that the desire was not for a superficial change, but a profound and radical one. Everything was in place for an outsider opposition figure to emerge as the likely winner.
Complementing this, the central issue of the campaign revolved around the economy. Inflation—one of the main indicators easily understood by society regarding economic stability or instability—hovered between 6.5% per month from January to August. As if those numbers weren’t alarming enough, after August chaos took hold of the campaign’s direction: from August to November, monthly inflation averaged 11.5%, peaking at 25.5% in December. Everything seemed to converge for a candidate associated with economic issues—and, above all, one who projected solutions—to emerge as the winner.
From this perspective, Milei embodied a political profile that channeled widespread discontent and connected with the desire for an urgent solution to economic deterioration. His previous track record, institutional viability, or alliances mattered less: what mattered was his ability to symbolically represent a break with the past and simultaneously a bet on the future. In this sense, his figure served as an electoral refuge for those who believed the only possible solution required a total disruption of the prevailing model. It is no coincidence that the economy became the centerpiece of the electoral debate: as strategist James Carville famously summarized during Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid.” That phrase, which encapsulated the strategic focus of that campaign, seems to strongly resonate in Argentina’s case as well.
Influential studies on economic voting in political science analyze various indicators to assess which factors citizens consider rationally when deciding their vote. Among them, perceptions of economic improvement, inflation, the exchange rate, or unemployment are the most frequent. The variation in Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—that is, the total value of goods and services produced by a country—can be considered an objective indicator of economic growth and, according to economic voting theory, a variable with predictive power regarding electoral outcomes.
If we take Argentina’s GDP expressed in current U.S. dollars for each year from 1983 to 2023 and classify the pre-election variation (whether presidential or legislative) as an increase, stability (between +1% and -1%), or decline, we obtain 20 observations. Based on those data, a logistic regression model was constructed to estimate the probability of the incumbent party’s victory depending on GDP performance. The estimated probability that the incumbent will win the 2025 legislative elections, if GDP continues its upward trend, is 86%. If the economy slows and growth drops below 1% or even to -1%, the probability falls to 32.2%. The worst-case scenario is a drop greater than -1%, in which the ruling party’s chances of winning drop to 3.6%.
That said, due to the personalist nature of Milei’s political leadership, his candidates in split elections may not perform as well as this model predicts for the president himself. Most likely—as seen in the recent electoral process in Santa Fe province—Milei’s candidates, who are not Milei, may achieve positive but modest results. If, in the October elections—when many provinces will renew national deputies and senators—the government adopts a more proactive stance and prominently features the president in the campaign, economic voting, in a year of growth, could work in the government’s favor.
Economic voting is not explained solely by objective factors like the inflation rate, the dollar’s value, or GDP levels. If the electorate’s perception doesn’t align with those indicators, the electoral result may not correlate with them. However, the analysis of the relationship between GDP variation and electoral outcomes in national elections from 1983 to 2023 reinforces the validity of this theory. No incumbent has managed to win when the economy contracted more than -1%. There have been cases where, despite growth above 1%, the ruling party still lost. Nevertheless, the data supporting Milei’s government hopes that in 84.6% of the cases where GDP grew, the incumbent won. To paraphrase Carville: Is it the economy, stupid?
*Machine translation proofread by Janaína da Silva.
Autor
Professor at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and the University of Belgrano, Argentina, where he also conducts research on political and electoral behavior, political communication, and political psychology. He holds a Master's degree from FLACSO and is a political scientist and sociologist from the UBA.
