"Two out of three Argentines do not want to go back to the past," said President Milei after the victory of La Libertad Avanza in the legislative elections. This phrase encapsulates the heart of a broader phenomenon: we are no longer discussing where to go, but rather where we do not want to return.
The results from Sunday show that the mirror of political identities is being constructed more by opposition than by conviction. In Argentina, we are expressing opinions, debating, and voting primarily based on what we do not want to be.
The current political offer is not so much defined by a project for the future, even though it includes that idea in its slogans, but by its need to mark the difference. Being "anti" is becoming more mobilizing than being "something". Francis Fukuyama mentions in "Identity" that the shift of political agendas, both on the left and the right, towards the protection of increasingly smaller group identities ultimately threatens the possibility of communication and collective action. In our country, this logic translates into an ever-stronger political polarization: antimileístas vs. antikirchneristas.
According to the latest report from Zuban Córdoba, 56.1% of Argentines identify as "antimileísta" and 45.6% as "antikirchnerista". Half of the population identifies more by opposition than by adherence. The fact is brutal: we are, above all, what we are not.
The ruling party understood this game like no one else. They had the vision—and the cunning—to clearly show who they are, and that identity clarity gives them great symbolic power, which comes into play every time there are elections. Another success was managing, in this campaign, to shift the discussion to the national level with a promise of future in contrast to a Peronism that could not move beyond the narrative of the present. The evocation of the past served the first as a rocket and the second as an anchor.
In a third position, the so-called "broad avenue of the middle" seems to have become an empty signifier. Provincias Unidas failed to be either a refuge or an alternative: despite having significant figures in Santa Fe, Córdoba, Chubut, Santa Cruz, Jujuy, and Corrientes, it had a diluted identity that promised moderation but offered no horizon. The governors, who had performed well in the provincial elections, tried to replicate that same strategy and escape from the nationalization of the political debate, but failed to bring it to a good port, except in the case of Corrientes.
This game of clear and blurred identities can also be read in light of something that Isonomía has been pointing out for some time: high-energy emotions—whether positive or negative—are a determining factor for electoral mobilization. According to their measurements, fear and hope were the main motivations for voting. Polarizing, then, mobilizes, but in turn, increasingly strains the limits of coexistence.
What is clear is that in a country of passions like ours, balance and moderation are not enough. Political identities are nourished by belonging, emotion, and narrative. For this reason, perhaps the challenge is to rethink what to offer in the future: in what we want to be and represent, not just in what we reject.
Because if we continue being what we are not, the risk is that we will be nothing.
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