Marcela Moreno, a preschool teacher in the central Argentine province of Cordoba, voted for libertarian economist Javier Milei in last month’s presidential election. With days to the runoff, she’s having cold feet.
“Oh, God, what have I done?” said Moreno, 47, leaving work to catch the bus in her school apron. Moreno thinks she’ll vote for Milei again because she wouldn’t support the current government — but fears her school could shutter if he follows through on his pledge to take a chainsaw to Argentina’s sprawling state budget to thwart triple-digit inflation.
“It’s horrible to vote like this,” she said on a recent hot, dry afternoon as her city of Jesus Maria, born of a Jesuit settlement now surrounded by fields of corn and soy, slept its siesta.
Argentines are waking up to a choice they’d rather not have to make this Sunday. On one side is Economy Minister Sergio Massa of the incumbent Peronist party, which has been in power for most of the past two decades and whose record includes inflation running at 143% that’s left four-in-every-10 Argentines in poverty.
Then there’s Milei, an untested outsider with radical solutions like ditching the peso for the dollar and closing the central bank that some economists warn could tip Argentina into hyperinflation and further social unrest.
It’s an unenviable choice that will determine Argentina’s fate as it struggles to beat a path out of a grinding economic crisis that threatens to engulf the nation of some 46 million. The election also resonates beyond its borders, with ramifications in neighboring countries including regional heavyweight Brazil and the outcome setting the tone for Latin America as the US and China vie for influence.
Read more: Lula Sides With Massa in Argentina as Regional Split Widens
Argentina’s electoral dilemma is arguably felt most acutely in Cordoba, where 1.2 million voters opted for neither of the candidates in the runoff — the highest percentage of any district in the country. In a race that’s neck-and-neck, those ballots may hold the key to the presidency.
Massa scored 37% to Milei’s 30% in the first round nationally, and each is now vying to win over the remaining third of the electorate who went with less polarizing options. That means overcoming negative ratings of around 50% for both candidate and wooing the voters of Patricia Bullrich.
Bullrich carried the hopes of Argentina’s moderates and business leaders with orthodox pro-market policies, many of them in Cordoba. But a poor campaign rife with infighting left her bloc out of the running - and her supporters unsure which way to turn, despite her subsequent endorsement of Milei.
Shaking his head, the mayor of Jesus Maria, Luis Picat, says he drove over 12,000 miles campaigning for Bullrich “for nothing.” Milei, who tapped the youth vote through viral TikTok videos that channeled their frustration, had an answer to inflation, the main problem putting a chokehold on every person and business; the main failing of Bullrich’s bloc was that it did not, he said.
“Today there is no future,” said Picat. “Within that disillusionment, people are looking for something different.”
That search applies above all to Cordoba, a tourist oasis in the heart of the country boasting scenic mountains, rivers, plains and valleys that’s also Argentina’s main producer of dairy, corn and auto parts.
Speaking in the province’s river-laced capital of the same name, Leonardo Destefano, secretary of Cordoba’s Industrial Union, which represents businesses from mining to shoemaking, laid out the predicament of deciding who can best extricate Argentina from its economic mire.
“In Massa we have the certainty we’ll continue under this model. The problem is that we don’t know for sure if with Milei we’ll get out faster” from crisis, he said over coffee in the body’s ornate city-center building. “What’s certain is we have this type of dilemma because we created it.”
With barely any political infrastructure or track record, Milei, 53, bets he can replicate the results of former President Mauricio Macri of the pro-market bloc, who scored 72% in Cordoba in 2015 — a wager local pollsters also make because of the anti-incumbent sentiment that runs deep in the province.
Milei visited Cordoba just once this year before placing first in an August primary. He returned this week to hold his last rally outside a shopping mall in the provincial capital, ditching the Buenos Aires concert venue he packed during the previous two rounds.
Massa, 51, is meanwhile cranking up the Peronist machinery to fight back hard. The career politician, who doled out welfare assistance and tax rebates to woo voters throughout the campaign, toured a powdered milk factory and a corn biodiesel hub last week in a cross-country sprint. Massive billboards of a grinning Massa grace most street corners of Cordoba, from the wealthy industrial centers that export dairy to Brazil in the south to the poorest, left-behind train hubs in the north.
He’s especially targeting voters of Juan Schiaretti, the provincial governor who also contested the presidency, taking only 7% nationwide but 28% locally. Schiaretti is of a local Peronist stripe but like his province, vehemently against Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Argentina’s polarizing former president and current vice president. Kirchner is blamed for policies that hurt Cordoba’s agricultural base and a 2013 episode where her government withheld the armed forces while lootings injured more than 200 people.
Massa punctuated his Cordoba trip with a rally in a muggy indoor stadium crowded with labor unions and activists. In a nod to the province’s hostility to Kirchner’s party — and his — Massa apologized for the times the government turned its back on Cordoba and promised a new era of national unity.
“Undecided voters will define this election,” said Tania Kyshakevych, a provincial congresswoman who is among a handful of local politicians building Massa’s base in Cordoba. Milei, she said, “capitalized on the anger of the most vulnerable sectors. We lost the streets because we weren’t able to solve their root problems.”
Kyshakevych is hoping to win them back the Peronist way: relentless door-knocking to poke holes in Milei’s platform over mate, the bitter herbal infusion Argentines love to sip. There are plenty of entry points, from his proposals to overhaul the public education and health-care systems to his criticism of Pope Francis — an important figure in the Catholic stronghold even if he weren’t Argentine.
Frequently foul-mouthed, Milei has scrambled to recast himself as a viable choice for centrists. He became less abrasive and mostly stayed off air. Gone is his chainsaw, once a fixture at rallies to signify the cuts he’d make to the state. On TikTok, where he made his brand yelling, he’s gone quiet, ending a recent video in a flat voice with his signature catchphrase: “Long live freedom, dammit!” The risk is that in blurring his anti-politician persona to compete with the professionals, he loses his most fervent base.
“I liked the old Milei,” Cesar Duran, a 46-year-old entrepreneur in Jesus Maria, said over a lunch of sizzling steak in a traditional Argentine parrilla, or barbecue.
He backed Milei in the first round but now he’s not sure he’ll cast any ballot. “People don’t even want to vote because we’re sick of everything,” he said.
