Will libertarian be Argentina’s next president? Broad discontent fuels rise.

From the back of a pickup truck, Javier Milei grips a red chain saw and shakes it in the air.

Its motor blares and spews smoke as the libertarian economist defining Argentine politics in the run-up to the Oct. 22 presidential election leads a caravan through the streets in the province of Buenos Aires. 

As Mr. Milei swings the chain saw – a nod to his plan to slash public spending and his desire to get rid of politics as usual – he screams, “The caste is trembling. The caste is trembling!” His fans go wild, shouting with approval.

Mr. Milei surprised many when his party won nearly 30% support in presidential primaries, catapulting the once-fringe economic pundit into the global spotlight. But observers say he’s tapped into widespread discontent among Argentines.

This scene of fervent Milei supporters is a snapshot of what’s being called a “new collective” of left- and right-wing voters united in their disgust for the status quo and for the dominant coalitions that for decades have failed to steer Argentina to prosperity.

And his base is primed to grow. Experts say Mr. Milei has figured out exactly what people want to hear, leaning into tried – and in some cases failed – economic policies of the past, while challenging social mores in a country that has been a trailblazer for human rights in Latin America.

He’s appealed to a “cross section of age, social classes, and socioeconomic origin, which is very different from the votes we have seen before,” says Pablo Touzón, an Argentine political scientist. 

Argentina today is “a different society with different needs and demands that traditional political parties have not known how to respond to,” says Paola Zuban, a pollster with Zuban Córdoba, which came closest to predicting the popularity of Mr. Milei’s party leading up to the primaries. 

“What is at risk is a rupture” in how Argentines have come to see themselves as a society over the past 40 years of democracy, she says. 

A “pivotal” moment

For most of the past four decades, Argentina has been governed by the Peronist movement, which has traditionally represented the working class. Sixteen of those years were dominated by a left-wing brand of politics fostered by former Presidents Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The center-right Juntos por el Cambio coalition, which is considered the main opposition party, had a four-year stint under former President Mauricio Macri, which closed out with a spike in inflation and more debt in 2019.

Mr. Milei’s rise is borne out of the “decomposition” of these two main political forces, Mr. Touzón says. His ardent supporters are “born from the crises of both coalitions.”

The heft of this voting bloc became clear on Aug. 13, when presidential primary elections – open to all voters, making them essentially a dry run for the general election – resulted in Mr. Milei’s La Libertad Avanza party clinching nearly one-third of the vote. The sudden emergence of a strong third-party force shook up the political chessboard. 

“It is a pivotal political moment,” says Ms. Zuban, the pollster. What voters are looking for has completely changed, she says.

Cristina Sille/Reuters

Supporters of Argentine presidential candidate Javier Milei hold dollar bills with his face on them during a campaign rally in Buenos Aires, Sept. 25, 2023. One of the libertarian's proposals is to peg the Argentine peso to the U.S. dollar.

Mr. Milei rose to fame with incendiary critiques of government policy on prime-time talk shows. He’s been repeating the same, increasingly vitriolic attacks on members of the “political caste” for years, calling them “parasites,” “useless,” and “crooks” who are entirely to blame for Argentina’s woes. 

He founded La Libertad Avanza in 2021 and snagged 17% of the votes in midterm elections that same year, taking political office for the first time as a national legislator.

His platform is focused mostly on economic overhaul, promising to ditch the flagging Argentine peso for the U.S. dollar and to eliminate the Central Bank. He’s crafted a message that taps into the exhaustion felt by a society pummeled by skyrocketing inflation (124% over the past year) and a disintegrating local currency.

It resonates with young people in particular, especially young men, many of whom say they see no path to building a future here.

For Nestor Martínez, a pizza-maker in his early 40s, it’s the fact that finally there’s a candidate “proposing different ideas” that’s drawn him to Mr. Milei. Mr. Martínez still identifies as a Peronist, but he says the political coalition moved too far to the left under Ms. Fernández de Kirchner, who ended her presidency in 2015 and currently serves as vice president.

“Work is the only thing that is going to take this country forward. We went too far to the other side,” he says, referring to what he views as the proliferation of welfare policies here. A study by the Catholic University of Argentina found that at the end of 2022, more than half of all Argentines received some form of social assistance.

If he becomes president, Mr. Milei says he will dramatically cut social spending, slash taxes (which just last week he told Congress were a form of “theft” by the government), and abolish several government ministries, including the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity. His far-right policies also cut at the heart of some key pillars of Argentine society, including turning the once-prized public education system into one that uses vouchers and privatizing parts of the public health system.

He says he’s committed to rooting out “social justice” and socialism, which he says have “infected” society. He has expressed support for the softening of gun laws and denies that climate change is real. On reproductive rights, he has pledged to hold a referendum to see if the country should reverse the legalization of abortion, which was a hard-fought victory by the Argentine feminist movement in 2020. 

He’s an eccentric personality, with five cloned English mastiff dogs and a new relationship with an actress known for her impersonations of Ms. Fernández de Kirchner. Add on his hallmark incendiary comments attacking everyone from Pope Francis to government officials, and Mr. Milei fuels wall-to-wall media coverage. 

Giving “change a chance”?

Argentina’s views on progress have swung to different extremes repeatedly in the nation’s tumultuous history.

Following its last military dictatorship, which murdered thousands of political dissidents, public consensus grew around prioritizing human rights, civil liberties, and constitutional protections.

A decade later, Argentina lived through a neoliberal period of dramatic deregulation, including a policy that pegged the peso to the U.S. dollar and ended in economic and political disarray. The government defaulted on its international debt, ordinary Argentines lost their life savings, and social unrest gripped the country.

In the 2000s under the Kirchners, the country recovered with the help of a commodities boom, and it became more populist, expanded public spending, and implemented protectionist policies.

But Mr. Milei’s supporters aren’t looking for political common ground, says Ms. Zuban; they want a clean slate. 

That sentiment reverberated outside the Central Bank last week, as people lined up for the launch of a book written by Ramiro Marra, La Libertad Avanza’s candidate running for mayor of the city of Buenos Aires.

“I think we need to give change a chance,” says Sofia Tisera, a young medical student who now identifies as a libertarian thanks to Mr. Milei. “I’m really attracted to the dollarization plan. ... I think it will be very beneficial to Argentina.” 

She supports virtually all of Mr. Milei’s proposals, except his opposition to legal abortion. But, she says his approach of holding a referendum is the right one. “It’s a very interesting space because nobody is judged; everyone is able to think freely,” she says.

Others in line bemoan a state that has turned “too socialist,” a society that has abandoned the idea of meritocracy, and a public education system many believe is falling apart.

Francisco Herrera, a Venezuelan immigrant whose been in Argentina for six years, says that as far as he is concerned, Mr. Milei “represents a radical change” desperately needed here.

Argentina has a long history of swinging from one set of extreme policies to the next, so why not try something new, he asks?

“Nothing ventured,” Mr. Herrera says, “nothing gained.”