As inflation skyrockets, Argentina must choose: Far-right outsider or status quo for president?

“I understand that inflation is a huge problem in Argentina,” Massa said. “I also understand that this government’s mistakes have hurt people. For those mistakes, even though I wasn’t a part of them until I became the economic minister, I apologize.”

Massa is staunchly opposed to dollarization, a tactic that has been tried in countries such as Ecuador and El Salvador with mixed results. “Dollarization means going from earning what you earn today to earning a quarter of it,” the candidate told reporters in August. “It’s simple.” 

Instead, Massa proposes lowering taxes, sending tax evaders to jail, introducing a digital peso, and renegotiating with the International Monetary Fund. Argentina — by far the biggest borrower from the United Nations’ financial agency — is currently struggling to pay back a whopping $44 billion loan.

“It’s really difficult to believe anyone these days,” said Fiorella Fassino, standing on a busy intersection near the presidential Casa Rosada. The 28-year-old, who works at the publicly-owned Banco Provincia, said she’ll most likely cast her vote for Massa.

“You never know if these candidates will actually do what they say they will, but I think Massa’s policies are the ones that can actually improve the country, little by little,” she said. “Nobody will solve things from one day to the next.”

Fassino said she fears a Bullrich administration, given how things went during center-right businessman Mauricio Macri’s presidency. The Macri administration, which led Argentina from 2015 to 2019, oversaw the only four-year stretch in the last 20 years with the left-leaning Peronist party out of power. Bullrich served as Macri’s security minister.

Under Macri’s leadership, Argentina received the largest loan in IMF history, approximately $57 billion. By the time the president left office, the country’s gross domestic product had shrunk by 3.4% and inflation totaled 240%. “When Bullrich’s government was in power four years ago, it was a disaster,” Fassino said. “Personally, it affected me a lot.”

Others, like business administration worker Viviana Bochicchio, appreciated the candidate’s work as security minister. She’ll be voting for Bullrich later this month, she said during her smoke break in downtown Buenos Aires.

“She doesn’t treat me like a vieja meada,” Bochicchio said, referring to a phrase frequently used by Milei supporters that literally translates to ‘old person who wet themself.’ “Nor like a right-wing oligarch,” she continued. “She’s the only one who treats me like a citizen.”

Bochicchio is especially interested in Bullrich’s commitment to ending public transportation strikes, which unionized workers have staged numerous times this year to demand improved salaries. “It’s a pain to have to commute every day to the office and not make it, or get there late,” Bochicchio said. “I understand their concerns, but I also need to work.”

Fassino is scared of a Milei presidency as well, she said. She works at a publicly-owned bank, the sort Milei vows to do away with if elected president. He also intends to privatize healthcare, education and other state-run entities.

“A lot of us have worked in the public sector, honestly, for years, and to lose our jobs would mean not being able to feed our families, like so many others,” Fassino said. About 40% of Argentines live in poverty, according to government data.

In addition to his contentious economic plans, Milei is campaigning on a number of incendiary social views. He wants to ban abortion, which Argentina legalized in 2018. He supports the right to bear arms and promotes the sale of human organs. He denies that climate change is caused by humans, dismissing the scientifically-backed fact as a socialist fabrication. 

And in a presidential debate earlier this month, he dismissed the brutal dictatorship that shook Argentina between 1976 and 1983 as a two-sided war. “It’s not 30,000 disappeared,” he said, denying a widely accepted estimate from human rights organizations of how many Argentines were abducted and never found again under the military junta.

For some, such extreme comments make Milei impossible to support. Others, like Urbani, admire him more.

“The guy realizes that it probably doesn’t help him to touch on those topics,” Urbani said, referring to Milei’s controversial stances. “But he says what he thinks anyway, because he’s sincere.”

Since discovering Milei while still in high school, Urbani has built a social media presence around advancing the candidate’s libertarian ideology, reaching almost 7,000 followers on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. He’s heavily campaigning for Milei from Mar del Plata. “Bit by bit, I’ve been able to convince a ton of people that Milei’s ideas make sense,” Urbani said.

The college student even submitted himself as a candidate for a minor government position called school advisor under Milei’s nascent Liberty Advances party, though he said he has no chance of winning.

The most likely result of the next round of voting, according to Rice University researcher Jones, is that Milei and Massa will go head-to-head in a November runoff. Many political forecasters agree.

“Voters are being presented with two not particularly palatable options,” Jones said. “One is to take a tremendous risk with Milei that's more likely than not to make things much worse rather than better, but has a glimmer of hope. Versus Bullrich or Massa, which is to maintain the status quo where things are just going to get worse — albeit, at a more gradual pace than is likely to be the case under Milei.”

“It’s a pretty pessimistic scenario,” he added, “however you look at it.”

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