The excitement around the recent Argentine election felt unprecedented. Everyone was talking about how fired up people were. Both sides thought this was a critical election. Random people on the subway called it, “The end of the world.” News reports intimated record turnout; that night people feared violence.
Except, well, turnout was bog normal. Completely normal. As in, nothing-to-see-here normal. Turnout was about the same as in 2015 and lower than most postwar elections. See below.
Of course, most postwar elections came in an atmosphere where everyone knew that the military could and would overturn a result that they didn’t like, and where Juan Perón was an active living political force. So maybe the whole postwar period isn’t a fair comparison. But turnout is barely up on 2015 and only a little above 2011. It really only looks good against the astonishingly apathetic election of 2007, where Cristina Fernández first won election in her own right.
I should point out that voting is compulsory in Argentina, although the penalty is risible. Right now, the fine is 100 pesos (about a buck-fifty, more or less). In theory, you’re also banned from carrying out any sort of bureaucratic procedure for a year, which could be a PITA if you, say, plan to buy a house or sell a car or something like that. (Here is the registry of people who didn’t vote.) In practice, it is not clear to me that the disincentive is all that large.
The compulsory rule dates back to 1912. Weirdly, the evidence points to conservative parties favoring the reform as a away to insure that their supporters would get to the polls in the face of fired-up and enthusiastic socialists. (Article 84 of the Saenz-Peña Act of 1912 exempted illiterates and people who lived more than 20 kilometers from the polls from the fines; this was strategic.)
To sum up, the election certainly seemed historic! But the average Argentine voter didn’t really act like it was.
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