But the lawyer and former lawmaker Sergio Massa, who has spent recent weeks warning of dire impacts from a Milei presidency, overtook the frontrunner at the polls. Massa is the minister overseeing the crumbling economy, but he has portrayed himself as the moderate and pragmatic leader the country needs.
“Argentines voted with two big emotions,” political scientist Juan Germano said. “Many were angry, and many were afraid.”
Massa and Milei will meet in the runoff in four weeks.
Fears of a tear-it-all-down Milei presidency appeared to help deliver a lead to Massa, 51, a former president of Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies, who captured over 36 percent of the vote. Milei, a congressman who turned 53 on Sunday, had more than 30 percent, knocking out the third-place candidate, former security minister Patricia Bullrich.
With the peso plummeting and inflation at nearly 140 percent, a large swath of voters in this nation of 46 million have demanded change. In Milei, they found a candidate who promises to blow up the entire system. Running on attacks against the country’s political “caste” — the local version of Trump’s “drain the swamp” — he has proposed shutting down the central bank, dollarizing the economy and taking a “chain saw” to government spending. He pledges to cut the number of government ministries from 18 to eight and let radically free markets rule.
But in a country where public services are heavily subsidized, and where the leftist party of former leaders Juan and Eva “Evita” Peron has dominated politics for much of the past two decades, many said they were unwilling to gamble on the Milei experiment.
“He’s like a kamikaze,” said Franco Espinosa, a 27-year-old internet technician who voted for Massa in Buenos Aires on Sunday. “It’s like lending your car to someone when they don’t know how to drive.”
Massa, speaking at his campaign headquarters in Buenos Aires on Sunday night, said the country “is going through a complex and difficult situation,” but voters “believed that we were the best tool to begin a new phase.”
“As president, I will not let you down,” he said. “Let’s put an end to the idea of destroying each other.”
Milei, addressing supporters at a hotel in Buenos Aires, appeared to temper his aggressive tone against Bullrich, whom he had previously called a “terrorist,” in a bid to rally support against the Peronistas in November.
“We can’t allow Kirchnerismo to keep destroying our lives,” he said, referring to the leftist Peronista former presidents Cristina Kirchner de Fernández and her late husband, Néstor. “The choice we have ahead is very clear. We either change, or we sink.”
Massa, using graphic terms and what he presented as concrete numbers, endeavored in recent weeks to show voters that a Milei presidency would mean deep cuts to the government subsidies on which many rely.
This “fear effect” allowed some Argentines to look past the economy’s abysmal performance under Massa, political analyst Mariel Fornoni said. With Massa, she said, “at least they’d be able to maintain their rights.”
Still, some were willing to take a chance on a new approach.
“Sometimes the person who seems the craziest is the sanest,” said Cristina Gómez, a 45-year-old housekeeper who voted for Milei in Buenos Aires on Sunday. “If you were to ask any Argentine, we all feel that same craziness and that same anger.
“And if it goes badly,” she said, “it wouldn’t be the first time.”
Massa, who finished third in the 2015 presidential election, has tried to distance himself from the unpopular government of President Alberto Fernández and Kirchner de Fernández, now the vice president. After a disappointing performance for the Peronistas in the primaries, Massa expanded welfare benefits for large segments of the population and slashed income taxes. Analysts have warned that those measures could threaten a deal with the International Monetary Fund that calls for cuts to government spending in Argentina.
“Massa opened the door to hyperinflation in Argentina,” says Alfonso Prat Gay, a former central bank president and minister of the treasury and public finances under conservative president Mauricio Macri. “The economic program is a mess and jeopardizes the peso. On the other hand, Milei directly proposes its elimination. It’s a perfect storm.”
Fernández did not run for reelection. Now attention turns to the runoff on Nov. 19, when the question will be whether Massa can pull enough voters from the conservative, tough-on-crime Bullrich to win a majority.
Milei’s approach has already upended the country.
His attacks on the peso — he has dismissed Argentina’s currency as “excrement” — have sent shock waves through the economy. Days after his primary win, the peso collapsed and inflation leaped. Argentines rushed to fill gas tanks and hoard nonperishable food before prices rose. Looters ransacked supermarkets.
In a country where 40 percent of people live in poverty, prices have been changing every week. Argentines now stuff their pockets with wads of cash to pay for groceries.
A Milei-style assault on government spending would be a dramatic shift in a country where public services are highly subsidized. To demonstrate the impact of such a cut, the Fernández government in recent days offered Argentines the option of declining subsidies for public transport — and paying fares 10 times higher than usual.
“People aren’t even afraid of that anymore,” Fornoni said. “You tell people they’re jumping into the void, and they say ‘I’m already in the void.’”
In the widely traded unofficial market in Argentina, which drives consumer prices, the cost of $1 surpassed 1,000 Argentine pesos last week for the first time. Before the primaries, $1 cost about 600 pesos. Before the pandemic, it cost 80 pesos.
Brian Ramos, a 28-year-old plumber and gas technician, recently needed to buy a new drill for work. The cost was 85,000 pesos. But his car broke down, he said, and he was forced to wait. When he made it to the store two weeks later, he said, the price had risen to 130,000 pesos.
“Our salaries are no longer enough. Everything is so expensive,” Ramos said outside a voting center in Buenos Aires on Sunday. He agreed with Milei’s proposals to get rid of the peso altogether. He would rather take a risk on an outsider, he said, “than go back to more of the same.”
Milei’s anti-establishment vitriol has earned him comparisons to Trump and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. He has described Pope Francis, the Argentine former archbishop of Buenos Aires, as “evil.” The leftist leaders of neighboring governments are “communists,” China is an “assassin,” and climate change is a “socialist lie.” He has proposed creating a market for the sale of organs.
In the tony Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires, lawyer Adrian Zylberberg called dollarization an “invention” that wouldn’t work here.
“Losing our national currency would mean losing our sovereignty,” said his wife, Mercedes Gadea. Both said they voted for Massa.
“Argentina has a lot of experience with inflation,” Zylberberg said. “We’ve always come out of it. A little better, a little worse, but we’ve always come out of it. I don’t know why we wouldn’t come out of it this time.”
