Juan Peron loses 1946 election

The Argentine presidential election of 1946 was both more free and more closely contested than is often realized. (The 1951 election in which Peron defeated Ricardo Balbin cannot compare with it in this respect; see my post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/3thpn1zhIHQ/ca1n8sA2gCsJ for details.) It was indeed the first free presidential election Argentina had had since 1928; the elections of the 1930's were notoriously rigged by the so-called Concordancia with its "patriotic fraud." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordancia_(Argentina) Yes, in 1946 there was violence during the campaign--mobs of Peronistas breaking up opposition rallies and sometimes killing people, etc. Nevertheless:

(1) The opposition candidate, Jose Tamborini of the "Democratic Union" (a coalition of the Radical, Socialist and Communist parties--and with the informal backing of the Conservatives, who did not run a candidate of their own) did have full access to the media, both print and radio. Indeed, he had the support of virtually all the big newspapers.

(2) Tamborini also had ample financial support from big business to offset Peron's labor support (though it is true that some businesses eventually hedged their bets and provided Peron with money as well).

(3) It seems to be universally agreed that whatever irregularities happened during the campaign, the actual balloting was free and secret, and the counting of the ballots was accurate.

(4) The results of the election--a majority supporting Peron and a strong minority opposing him--do seem to be in accord with observers' views of the actual state of Argentine public opinion at the time. Peron won 52.8 percent of the vote to 42.9 percent for Tamborini. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_general_election,_1946 (In the electoral college, the vote was 299-66 according to Wikipedia; other sources give 304-72. https://books.google.com/books?id=z6J0BQAAQBAJ&pg=PT115 The Argentine electoral college, which has since been abolished, shared with its US counterpart a tendency to exaggerate the percentage of votes given to the winning candidate.)

So in essence, the question is, Was there anything that could have changed the minds of about 5 percent of the Argentine electorate? I doubt that a single POD could do the trick, but here are a few things I can think of:

(1) The US unintentionally helped Peron by the openness with which it opposed him--thereby allowing him to pose as the candidate of Argentine nationalism. A popular Peronist slogan was "Peron or Braden". To be sure, Spruille Braden, the outspokenly anti-Peronist US ambassador had departed months earlier, but he had departed to become Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs. On February 12, 1946--two weeks before the elections--the US State Department issued its famous "Blue Book" on Argentina, attacking Peron's support for the Axis during World War II, and the "Nazi-Fascist" aspects of the "new Argentina."

The "Blue Book" was intended for two audiences--Latin American governments and the Argentine electorate. Both were urged to regard Peron as the hemisphere's leading villain. But the Blue Book failed with both. The Chilean government said that Braden had not proved his case. The Cuban government said that restoration of inter-American solidarity should take precedence over continuing to fight a war that had ended in 1945, and the Brazilian government took a similar position. As for the Argentine electorate, it is generally agreed that the Blue Book helped Peron by causing resentment of what was regarded as US interference in Argentine internal affairs. Peron accused Braden of being the "inspiration, creator, organizer and virtual chief" of the Democratic Union (UD), that "unholy oligarchy-communist alliance."

So the opposition might have done better if someone more sensitive to Argentine nationalist feelings than Braden had been Ambassador and then Assistant Secretary of State. Interestingly, the US charge d'affairs in Buenos Aires urged the State Department *not* to release the Blue Book before the elections, fearing exactly the backlash that took place.

(Indeed, at least one source thinks the Blue Book in itself was decisive: ""A shift of only 140,500 votes away from Peron would have given Tamborini the popular majority. More to the point, a shift of only 37,350 votes in five electoral districts would have given him a majority in the electoral college. The narrowness of Peron's eledctoral victory makes it more than likely that the Blue Book served to swing the balance in his favor." https://books.google.com/books?id=oIWpDxJH1PkC&pg=PA45)

(2) Maybe Tamborini was not the right candidate--he was certainly dull. (Even the names of the Democratic Union's ticket--Tamborini and his running mate Enrique Mosca--were a target of ridicule--"the tambourine and the fly"...) OTOH, I'm not sure who else was available. Former President Alvear, who in his last years had finally united the "personalist" and "anti-personalist"--i.e., pro-Yrigoyen and anti-Yrigoyen--wings of the Radical party had died in 1942. It's probably too early for the two men who were to dominate Radical politics for the next generation--Ricardo Balbin and Arturo Frondizi (Frondizi was first elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1946). Maybe someone from the left wing of the Radicals would have a better chance of cutting into Peron's working-class support. One such leftist was Amadeo Sabattini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadeo_Sabattini whom Peron had actually offered the vice-presidential nomination on his own ticket. But whie Sabattini turned Peron down, he was also critical of the "centrist" leadership of the Radicals and opposed to the whole idea of the Democratic Union. So I doubt there was any realistic chance of his becoming its candidate.

(3) Maybe it was a mistake to have the Communists in the UD--it might have been better had they officially remained neutral while informally supporting the UD. Some conservatives didn't want to vote for a coalition including Communists--but then, some conservatives found it hard to vote for a Radical (like Tamborini) in any event.

(4) There was a three-day lockout by businesses in response to a "bonus bill" that was passed to help Peron win the labor vote. This may have been a mistake. The lockout was successful in bringing business to a close, but it convinced the *descamisados* (literally, "shirtless ones") even more strongly that Peron was on their side, and that his opponents were tools of the hated oligarchy. (In fact the UD's position on socio-economic issues was a "progressive" one not terribly different from the Peronists'. But as long as the UD had the support of the employers, the workers had a hard time believing the UD would act in labor's interests.)

Of course, even if Peron were beaten that would not mean the end of Peronism, as its persistence after Peron was ousted in 1955 shows. Still, that was a military coup, whereas an electoral defeat in 1946 would be a blow at Peron's mystique of spokesmen for the people. Much would of course depend on what kind of government the UD would provide, and given that it was a rather incongruous alliance, I am not sure it could govern effectively. And even if Peron himself were somehow totally discredited--and it would take more than one electoral defeat to do that--the populist and nationalist impulses which motivated his followers would not go away.
 
I would definitely like to see what an Argentina without Peron is like. Whether it could avoid another military coup and stabilize is definitely a thought to consider, because if the military was capable of ousting Peron, what would prevent them from deposing Tamborini if they wanted to?
 
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