Young Voters Do Not Belong Inevitably to the Left

“However, outside of the contemporary United States and United Kingdom, a look at the composition of certain right-of-center political movements casts doubt on the reflexive association many hold between young people and voting for the Left.”

On the evening of November 19th, not long after the polls had closed, President-elect of Argentina Javier Milei bounced across a stage in front of cheering supporters, having just been decidedly elected President of Argentina. It was a result not without its ups and downs in the months prior. The future President of Argentina, then a National Deputy for the City of Buenos Aires who previously enjoyed a colorful career in television commentary, music, and soccer, unexpectedly placed first in the primary elections in August. He was then favored going into the first round of the Argentine general election on October 22nd. However, as returns came in that night, it was clear that Milei had fallen well short of expectations and found himself trailing Minister of Economy Sergio Massa, whose candidacy many had dismissed given Massa’s role in a deeply unpopular administration marked by profound economic failures, most notably skyrocketing inflation. Fortunately for Milei, Massa’s margin of victory on the evening of the 22nd was not large enough to stave off a runoff. (Milei and his allies alleged voter fraud following the first round.) The media narrative began to shift in the time leading up to the November 19th final round as many in the press and in the Argentine political establishment began to express a degree of relief, believing that they might be spared a Milei presidency and, thus, the potential for a rather dramatic change from the Argentine status quo.

But that was not to be, and within a short while of the voting’s conclusion in that final round, it became clear that Milei had won a commanding victory over Massa, defeating him by a margin of 55.69% to 44.31%, qualifying the result in the minds of many observers as a “landslide” victory. Massa won only three of the country’s 23 provinces, and in provinces such as Santa Fe, home to the city of Rosario, which has been plagued by gang violence and elevated crime rates, President Milei’s margin of victory was remarkable. President Milei also narrowly won the City of Buenos Aires despite losing—albeit barely—Buenos Aires Province. (In Latin America, unlike in the United States, those living in cities have been known to back conservative political parties and candidates at a higher rate than those living in rural areas, depending on the country.)

Many of President Milei’s policy proposals, such as completely doing away with the Central Bank of Argentina and eliminating entire departments of the government, appear radical, as does his take-no-prisoners approach to rhetoric, denouncing “collectivists” in language that few serious candidates for political office in the United States ever would. (With that said, President Joe Biden’s chest-thumping about taking his chief political rival “behind the gym” is hardly “presidential.”) But President Milei’s approach reflects the dire situation in which Argentina finds itself, and this is why so many Argentines, long accustomed to voting for Peronists, demanded a starkly different course for the country. (1) (This was also perhaps exacerbated by the disappointment of Mauricio Macri’s nominally right-of-center presidency from 2015 to 2019.) When inflation has soared by about 120%; approximately 40% of the population in a highly educated and resource-rich country lives in poverty; and an entire generation of youth sees no future in a country, one, I suppose, is open to trying something new—even dramatically new. This is all the more the case for those who must have some sense that things could be otherwise, being reminded from time to time that they live in a nation that around the time of World War I had a similar per capita income to Switzerland and in the early to mid part of the 20th century was on a similar economic trajectory to Australia and Canada.