In Dollar We Vote
Chainsaw Populism, the Dollar, and Electoral Choices in Javier Milei’s Argentina
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32813/2179-1120.2025.v18.n2.a1199Keywords:
dollarization, economic voting, populism, Javier Milei, Google TrendsAbstract
Javier Milei’s 2023 victory has reignited debate on currency crises and right-wing populism in Argentina. This article tests whether the candidate’s flagship pledge—full dollarization—shaped provincial voting patterns. A natural quasi-experiment pairs the thirty-day Google search average for “Dollar” with second-round vote shares across eighteen provinces. A monotonic correlation (ρ = 0.56; p ≈ 0.015) and a positive robust OLS slope (β ≈ 0.58; p < 0.05) indicate that surges in dollar interest preceded swings of up to six percentage points in Milei’s favour. Bootstrap and leave-one-out diagnostics confirm the finding’s stability. Interpreted through Economic Voting Theory (Downs, 1957) and Sunstein’s simplicity-under-complexity framework (Sunstein, 2007), the results suggest that dollarization functioned as a cognitive shortcut, translating monetary anxiety into electoral support.
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