Foreigners’ vote: how PASO performed in the province and city of Buenos Aires

With an exponential increase in the number of people allowed to vote for automatic registration on the electoral roll, foreigners living in the city of Buenos Aires have maintained, with variations in the numbers but with the same end result, the preferences in the STEP than those born in Argentina. It means that At the tables of foreigners in Buenos Aires, he won Together for change. However, In the dark rooms of Buenos Aires, the most chosen ballot was that of the Frente de Todos and not the sum of Juntos’ internal options, as he did among native-born voters.

In the case of Autonomous City of Buenos Aires The trend in recent years has been reversed, which had Kirchnerist Peronism as the winner, and in PASO 2021 the party in local power won with 38% of the vote. Behind, the Frente de Todos, with 32%; Libertad is progressing, with 11%; and the Left Front – Unity, with 9%.

While in the Province of Buenos Aires, foreigners elected by majority the candidates of the Frente de Todos, with 48% of the vote. The second place went to the Juntos alliance (which had two lists, led at the national level by Diego Santilli and Facundo Manes), with 33.3% and the third to Vamos con vos, the poll which had Florencio Randazzo as the maximum reference. , with 3.97%. Very close were the Left Front, with 3.34% and Avanza Libertad, which had José Luis Espert as candidate for the national deputation, with 3.37% and whose provincial and local candidates were contested in the second electoral section, which made him lower the average. notably.

In the federal capital, the outgoing novelty was the exponential increase in the number of people eligible to vote, with nearly 400,000 new voters. Until the previous elections, the registration system was voluntary – not entirely straightforward – and there were 21,000 eligible voters. But with the Electoral code of the city of Buenos Aires approved in 2018, it was defined that the registration of all migrants is automatic.

This regulation was published during these elections, which increased by 20 times the number of people entitled to vote and increased the figure to 417,000. Means that, From less than 1% of the electoral list, migrants have grown to more than 16%.

The quantitative data of foreigners who voted in the city of Buenos Aires can be read in two ways. At a proportional level, participation was low, 17% of the total qualified. In PASO 2019, 39% of volunteers went to vote. The other way to interpret these elections is with the absolute amount: this 17% which seems little translates into a lot of people. There are 71,578 people, while in 2019 there were less than 8,083 voters. In other words, the nominal number of people who went to vote was multiplied by nine compared to the previous STEP.

In the two PBA and CABA, foreigners can vote, in legislative elections like this year, only provincial and municipal candidates. They are not entitled to elect national deputies and senators from the list. But they represent the vast majority (73%) of foreign residents across the country.

The results of the Buenos Aires election provide interesting data for analysis. Together for Change had obtained, both in PASO 2017 and in these two years later, 20% of the votes. In 2021, it rose to 38%. In other words, it was the force that profited the most from the new voters list, at least in Primary. This year a growth of the Left Front and the far right, with the party which, at the national level, within the CABA, represented the extravagant Javier Milei.

Almost the cake splits into center-right (38% JxC plus 11% Avanza Libertad) and center-left halves (32% TD plus 9% FIT-U).

One possible analysis so that in these elections for the first time the most voted party is Together for Change – while in 2019 the Frente de Todos had taken 40 percentage points of advantage – has to do with the growth of the Venezuelan population on the electoral rolls, which rose from position 11 to position 4 in number of qualified persons.

“I understand that the change in migrant voting trend may be due to different factors: more than 60,000 new migrant voters participated in these PASOs, making their party preferences known for the first time; More than 60,000 Venezuelans have joined the migrant register and that migrants and nationals are informed and build their party options based on the same sources, media and environments, so that as the migrant electorate has grown, democratized and diversified , the tendency of the vote of the two is in turn oriented to be spliced ​​and coincide ”, he commented Ana Paula Penchaszadeh, Doctor in Social Sciences and Philosophy, researcher at Conicet and at the Gino Germani Institute, specialized on the subject and collecting for several years data on votes, variations and participation.

In CABA, the most numerous communities on the electoral lists this year are the Bolivian, Paraguayan, Peruvian and Venezuelan. Behind come the Uruguayan, the Brazilian and the Colombian, among others. One would expect Venezuelans to have been inclined to vote overwhelmingly for the center-right, among other things, because Argentina’s progressive options are akin to madurismo.

Although Juntos por el Cambio had anti-immigration policies (DNU 70 signed by Mauricio Macri in 2017 and repealed by Alberto Fernández in 2021), the Venezuelan population felt more sheltered from the ideas expressed by this alliance, even from the speech that the possible path taken by Peronism could “end in Venezuela”.

In any case, Penchaszadeh deemed it hasty to analyze the vote with the new electoral list: “The vote is secret. A change in trend is observed, but as the pattern has risen so much it is also very difficult to know. For more than 395,000 migrants, it was a new opportunity to vote. They had never voted, it’s like a clean slate”.

In the province of Buenos Aires, where automatic registration has been operating since 2009 for migrants with an identity document, the list of foreigners eligible to vote increased by 24.5% thanks to an agreement signed in March between the National Directorate of Migration (DNM) and the provincial and national registers of persons. This resulted in an update of the quantity, which It went from 669,676 voters to 820,530.

The survey carried out by Penchaszadeh with all these data shows that the electoral participation of foreigners in the PBA has increased over the last decade. In 2009, 9.3% voted and ten years later, 30.33%. However, in line with the decline in Argentinian participation in elections, for migrants it also fell to 21% (around 180,000 people). This decline could partly explain the fall of the Frente de Todos, that two years ago he got 66% of the foreign votes and now, although he won, he has fallen to 48%.

In the most successful sections on the list led nationally by Victoria Tolosa Paz was the Third, which brings together the most populous municipalities of the suburbs of Buenos Aires. He obtained 57.63% of the votes, against 20.87 of the sum of Juntos’ options. The third was the FIT-U, with 5.08% and the randazzismo behind, with 4.67%.

He also achieved an above-average percentage in the Eighth, which includes the capital section (La Plata), where it obtained 55.69% and Juntos obtained 23.07%. In the only one where he wonThe opposition was in the second, which represents the parties in the northeast of the province, those attached to Santa Fe. There, Ensemble won with 42.37% (and internally, Santilli’s list prevailed), three points in over the Frente de Todos (39.25%) and without the participation of the candidates of Avanza Libertad, due to a challenge by the Electoral Council that, in José Luis Espert’s party, they see – and they say it gently – like a “black hand” operated by the opposition coalition.

“It is clear that although the options of nationals and migrants are starting to merge, because migrants consume the same means as Argentines and have the same life, It’s also clear that foreign groups are more progressive and have more center-left options.Penchaszadeh considered. It remains to be seen what will happen to the legislative elections in November, if participation increases and if the results change.

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