AN EMERGING CENTER

More election results hint that showboats and populists are fading behind doers.

The 2024 elections across Latin America continued apace this week as voters went to the polls in Uruguay, Chile and Brazil on Sunday. Municipal run-off elections in Brazil consolidated the rightward tilt of the country’s electorate while handing two-thirds of the country’s local political machines to the five non-ideological parties of the “centrão” (big center).

Meanwhile, first-round municipal and regional elections in Chile were a triumph for the center-right Chile Vamos coalition against the two dominant blocs of the 2022 elections. President Gabriel Boric’s leftist coalition and the hard right Republican Party of José Antonio Kast lost ground in an election with a record 85% turnout under new obligatory voting rules. Several governorships advanced to run-offs on November 24.

In Uruguay, the presidential race advanced as expected to a run-off (also on November 24) between center-left Yamandú Orsi of the opposition Broad Front (44%) and center-right Álvaro Delgado (27%) of the ruling National Party. Delgado was endorsed by the third-place candidate, Andrés Ojeda (16%), and their combined vote totals are nearly tied with Orsi’s.

What is underneath?

While the political issues of greatest concern to voters in Brazil, Chile and Uruguay are varied and mostly incongruent with each other, some common dynamics appear to be at play. All three electorates are unhappy with their incumbent presidents but polarization and social upheaval are not part of the prevailing mood. Outsiders from across the political spectrum are also coming up short. This is all a departure from the overall trajectory of the region since 2018.

The louder, more bombastic voices that once dominated the discourse in Chile and Brazil are fading. Sunday’s biggest losers in Chile were arguably Kast and Boric’s leftist coalition partner, the Communist Party. Brazilian former president Jair Bolsonaro, whose supporters violently sacked Brasilia after he lost in 2022, seemed bored with the retail work of building political machines this year and ceded ground to rivals. His candidate for mayor of Rio de Janeiro - his hometown - was defeated by a 2-1 margin by a longtime incumbent who ignored Bolsonaro’s polarizing attacks.

Orsi reached 44% on Sunday because he successfully shaved the leftist edges off the Broad Front and didn’t overplay public worries about crime or general distaste over corruption scandals dogging President Luis Lacalle Pou. Indeed, a surprise from Uruguay’s electorate last Sunday was the rejection of a measure to legalize nighttime residential police raids, which had expected to pass comfortably. Even with organized crime syndicates pushing violently into their placid country, Uruguayans refuse to allow fear to overtake storied principles.

These dynamics suggest that voters in the region are growing tired of endless political conflict that doesn’t improve their quality of life. Observers in Chile detect a return to voting patterns predating the 2019 social unrest that brought a rash of polarization, fruitless rounds of constitutional redrafts and Boric’s outsider presidency that has accomplished little. The rise of Brazil’s Social Democratic Party (PSD) as the dominant force in the centrão is pulling conservatives away from yelling and fistfights and closer to substantive and coherent reform agendas that can be effectively enacted. It remains to be seen whether Colombia will join in this moderating pattern heading into its own 2026 elections, or if the explosive growth of cocaine production and the crisis next door in Venezuela will keep instability and polarization alive and well there.

Our take:

Unless the choices in 2026 are suddenly limited by unexpected events, it appears a conservative-centrão coalition could gain a commanding grip on power in Brazil without Bolsonaro as its leader, and Evelyn Matthei has a good chance to become Chile’s first female center-right president with the Chile Vamos coalition. Both could usher in stable governing majorities that could enact right-leaning economic and fiscal policies that their voters generally want, without the culture wars and messy chaos they don’t want.

While Delgado has a month to sharpen the policy contrasts with Orsi, particularly on security, it appears to most observers in Uruguay that the Broad Front might have the edge on November 24. The economy is good for most people and public faith remains high in institutions being able to solve problems like organized crime. The voters seem less left-leaning than in the mood for alteración, and Orsi’s flavor is distinctly more center than left.

As I wrote back in March, leaders in Latin America who rode into power on polarization always seem to eventually fall into a trap. It is hard to govern, nearly impossible to get needed reforms adopted and the people get scant reward for having taken sides. Even Argentine President Javier Milei, perhaps the most outrageously polarizing outsider in power in the region, is an exception that proves the rule. He came to office not only with a flamboyant discourse about good and evil and vanquishing the political establishment. He came with an extensive, coherent and radical economic reform agenda and pulled no punches about it being tough medicine. He won the biggest landslide in Argentina’s modern democracy.

Milei’s brash project is brand new so he has only a handful of loyalists in Congress. He recognized from day one that he’d have to move heaven and Earth to get enough reforms enacted to produce tangible economic results at street level before the 2025 legislative midterm elections. Otherwise, his reformist revolution will founder on the beach rather than sail. Every time he has burst into a polarizing rage on social media over some setback this year, he and his inner circle have then seen the consequences of such distractions. It has been a running lesson and heeding it has kept his popularity ratings high despite the economic pain his reforms have brought.

The left, meanwhile, has run out of ideas and learned this year it cannot resort to old polarizing tactics if it wants to win. The unfailingly earnest Boric had great promise but it seems he never fully understood the electorate that chose him. President Lula da Silva’s leftist coalition in Brazil never had a governing majority after his narrow win in 2022, and has been gutted as a national force this year. Its militant core will not let go of its angry anti-American, pro-chavista gobbledygook, and the poor and working classes are no longer loyal to them. Lula should be boasting of his achievements as president, but he has none. In fact, he seems to have come back to office with no credible plans to achieve anything.

In the end, governing by improvisation and impulse is self-defeating in Latin America. Even in the weaker democracies, it doesn’t last long. The public eventually turns back to those forces that are competent and organized enough to get important and meaningful things done. Latin American democracy takes a lot of knocks from observers, but it still gets the fundamentals right. Ideology and rhetoric can get the voters’ attention, but they get tired of chaos and waiting for results that don’t come and vote accordingly.

What We’re Watching:

• In other Javier Milei news, the Argentine President abruptly fired Foreign Minister Diana Mondino on Wednesday after the country voted for the now-annual U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning U.S. economic sanctions on Cuba. Milei is said to be “livid” that Argentina didn’t join the U.S. and Israel in opposing the measure, which was adopted by a vote of 187-2, and immediately demanded Mondino’s resignation. A statement from the Casa Rosada stressed the need for “a diplomatic corps that reflects, in every decision, the values of freedom, sovereignty and individual rights that characterize the Western democracies.” The statement added that “the Executive Branch will initiate an audit of career personnel in the Foreign Ministry, with the objective of identifying promoters of agendas in enmity with liberty.” Gerardo Werthein, Milei’s ambassador to Washington and a longtime friend and ally, will be the new Foreign Minister.