Even if Axel Kicillof manage to shield the province of Buenos Aires from the advance of the right and achieve re-election, as the polls suggested last Sunday, his future management could be a nightmare: a management full of obstacles awaits him. If the PASO figures are maintained in October, the ruling party will lose a good part of its political volume in both chambers of the Legislature, Together for Change (JxC) will be the first minority and the bloc of Javier Miley he would become an arbitrator (firefighter?) of any contest.
The nation’s presidency in the hands of the opposition would be a big part of the headache that could torture the governor. It is known: the economic dependence that Buenos Aires has on the central administration is total. The fate of the president would be at the mercy of the decisions made in Balcarce 50. That is, precisely, the central fear that runs through Peronist offices in suburban districts where they already activate mechanisms to military with greater force than in the primaries the complete ballot, with the aim of putting Sergio Massa in the ballotage. A brutal adjustment like the one proposed by Milei and Patricia Bullrich it will end up defunding the municipalities, they alert and yearn for what never happened: Larreta up in the JxC intern competing with Peronism.
legislative distribution
Unión por la Patria (UP) would be left with a block of 35 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, seven less than it has. In other words, it would need 12 allies to reach a quorum and 24 more votes to get the two-thirds that are needed to approve key laws such as the Budget and the Tax Prosecutor and to carry out borrowing requests with international organizations.
The panorama in the Senate is not more encouraging: the Frente de Todos (FdT) -today UP- would have a bench of 19 people, four fewer than it already has. He would need five opponents to start a session and 12 to get relevant projects. If the legislative work was full of obstacles in the last two years, it is possible that since December you will have to appeal to your best negotiators if you do not want to see the building located on 7th avenue paralyzed.
Deputies
In the current configuration of the Chamber of Deputies, the ruling party has 42 seats, of which 23 are up for grabs and the remaining 19 have an expiration date of 2025. If the percentages from last Sunday’s elections were repeated in the general elections, the The ruling party would renew just 16 seats, which would drastically lose its legislative volume. It would go from 42 to 35 own votes.
The main beneficiary of the decline in the ruling party could be Juntos. It is that although this block would maintain the same number of places since December of this year, it would immediately become the first minority. It has 41 seats, of which it risks 19. It has the remaining 22 insured until the year 2025. To those 22 we would have to add the 19 that it would get this year, so it would maintain the current number: 41.
A series of smaller blocs have multiple destinations: some will run out of office and will pass into legislative oblivion, such as Espacio Abierto Juntos, which has two possist-edited seats; Unity for Victory, with a deputy who entered thanks to the Kirchnerist list and then broke up; and 17 de Noviembre, another monobloc of neighborhood origin, and those that will continue for two more years, such as the two monoblocs that respond to the Left Front.
Senate
The current distribution in this Chamber is less complex, although it is equally or more problematic for the ruling party. It has 46 seats and they are divided equally between the Frente de Todos and Juntos por el Cambio. This balance forced the governor to negotiate each of the sessions with a single interlocutor, since Juntos is the one that has the power to provide a quorum, while the ruling party only has the ability to break a tie with the vote of the president of the body, Veronica Magario.
Going forward, also if the percentages of the primaries were repeated on October 22, the distribution would leave the ruling party in a much more uncomfortable position. The ruling party would fall from 23 to 19 seats. JxC would also lose, but only one seat, and would be left with 22. In other words, the four places that Peronism could lose and the only place that bullrichsism would be in a position to lose would be won by ultraliberalism. La Libertad Avanza would enter the venue with a block of five members.
Buenos Aires map
The new distribution of legislative power can perhaps be explained more accurately by looking at the results in the eight electoral sections. In seven of them -with the exception of the Capital Section (La Plata)-, ultraliberalism would be able to enter deputies and senators. The most representative region is the suburbs: in the First Division, Milei would take four of the 15 seats in dispute, and in the Third Division, she would win two of the nine that are up for grabs. But it would also add in those of the interior, which confirms that the vote for the minarchist was distributed throughout the Buenos Aires territory.
