In Unión por la Patria they are concerned about the absenteeism that was registered in the provincial elections and they came out to encourage participation. But there are doubts about where the vote of those disenchanted would go.
The provincial elections were marked by the high level of absenteeism. A little more than 30 percent of the citizens authorized to vote decided not to do so, which raises a question regarding the PASO that no pollster can answer with certainty. The Government took note of this scenario and He went out to ask “that people go vote”but there are different opinions within the ruling party that warn that encouraging the electoral participation of those who are angry with the course of the country could be detrimental to the interests of Sergio Massathe pre-candidate for president of the list of “majority unit” of Union for the Fatherland.
The data regarding local elections anticipate an unprecedented scenario since 2001: of the 17,011,971 Argentines authorized to cast their vote, 5,418,645 did not. In the ruling party they believe that in this universe, especially in the most vulnerable sectors, there is a “probable voter” of Massa or Juan Grabois. “In many provinces, the highest level of absenteeism It happened in the popular neighborhoodsthat is something that Peronism has to work on and mobilize, there is our public there”, says one of the central protagonists of the campaign command, which he attributes to the lack of resources to travel on election day: “That has to be solved by our device”they anticipate.
However, they admit that the presumption is not endorsed by scientific data that corroborate what that electorate will do if they go to the polls on August 13: “People are in another, it is impossible to measure.”
Another sector that in UxP have identified with high levels of absenteeism is that of the youngest. In this strip, they point out -also by intuition- that the votes are more distributed, with a special penetration of the libertarian Javier Miley.
The curious thing is that, despite this, there were several main referents of the ruling party that in recent days have taken the lead in the strategy to attack the problem of absenteeism. Starting with Massa, who had already made it part of his speeches, but in his last campaign spot he addressed his with a forceful message: “Come to vote, the homeland is in your hands.”
So did his running mate, Agustín Rossi; the Buenos Aires governor Axel Kicillof and his deputy, Verónica Magario; who called on the people “to defend” their rights against the proposals of the opposition.
In the case of Massa, it was also a strategy with a segmented message: in Mendoza he spoke to retirees through defend your “right to free medicines”, in Merlo urged women to go vote to “defend the pension moratorium”, because “seven out of ten beneficiaries are women”, and also to support “university scholarships and the delivery of notebooks for their children”; while in meetings with workers she urged them to go vote “to stop” the opposition labor reforms. In short, the objective, as he told Clarionis to summon the disenchanted who stayed in their homes.
“We are working to increase participation and to lower the blank vote, there may be a voter who in 2019 chose us frightened by the government of Mauricio Macri and maybe they are not satisfied for everything we lackedbut at the end of the road they are going to vote in their own defense,” they reason in the Unión por la Patria bunker.
There is no unanimity regarding the effectiveness of this strategy. Different referents of the campaign and territorial leaders, among which are noted several of the most populous mayors of the Conurbano, suggest that the ruling party should not focus more on absenteeism. “The one who is angry, if he is going to vote, he votes against us. We must apologize for not having done everything we wanted, explain the opposition’s proposals to the people well, so they know they want to go for their rights, and let the people decide whether or not they want to go on election day . Forcing is not good and we can do worse”, is the reflection of one of the leaders who was this week at the meeting of campaign leaders.
The difference in criteria exposes the disorder that is noticed in the campaign, exacerbated by the absence of Cristina Kirchner. Precisely, the movements of the vice president in the final stretch for the PASO are observed with expectation: in the ruling party, even in the massista troops, they believe that it is the only one that can recover their own votes that did not go to vote. The former head of state has been on the sidelines since July 17.
