A regional poll published on Wednesday by the research agency CB Consultora Opinión Pública found that Argentine President Javier Milei ranks as the most popular head of state in South America.
The survey, conducted by the Argentina-based research agency across the region’s countries during the month of December, found that the Argentine libertarian president leads the charts, ending 2024 with an approval rating of 51.8 percent, making him both the highest-rated President in the region and the only one with an approval rating of over 50 percent.
Uruguay’s outgoing center-right President Luis Lacalle Pou ranked second with 49.8 percent, and Paraguayan conservative Santiago Peña ranked third with 46.7 percent.
Milei’s measured approval ratings during December marked an increase from the 50.2 percent recorded by CB Consultora Opinión Pública in its November poll. At the time, Milei occupied the ranking’s second position against Lacalle Pou’s 51.5 percent approval rating. During September’s monthly poll results, Milei reportedly occupied the sixth position.
Throughout his first year in office, Milei, who took office in December 2023, implemented a dramatic overhaul of Argentina’s bloated government institutions and enacted a series of drastic “shock therapy” measures and sweeping reforms to avert the collapse of the country’s economy and avoid a hyperinflation spiral. The policies successfully reduced inflation from 25.5 percent in January to 2.4 percent in November.
Most notably, CB Consultora Opinión Pública’s survey found that all of the region’s leftist presidents ranked as the worst-rated alongside Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Brazil’s radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ranked fifth, with 53.1 percent of respondents expressing an unfavorable opinion of Lula against 44.3 percent who responded favorably. Chile’s far-left President Gabriel Boric ranked sixth, with a 40.2 percent approval rating.
In Colombia, Gustavo Petro, a former member of the Marxist M19 guerilla and the nation’s first leftist president ever, ranked seventh, with 39.9 percent of respondents expressing a favorable opinion of Petro against 56.6 percent who expressed a unfavorable opinion. Colombian media reported on Wednesday that the poll’s results denote a downward trend in Petro’s approval rating from November’s 41.2 percent.
The region’s three worst-rated Presidents, according to the survey’s results, are Bolivia’s socialist president Luis Arce, Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, and Peruvian President Dina Boluarte.
Arce, a notoriously pro-Iran President who is presently waging a lengthy power struggle over control of Bolivia against his former mentor and suspected pedophile Evo Morales, obtained an approval rating of 33.6 percent of respondents, against 63.2 percent who responded unfavorably.
Maduro, who held a highly fraudulent presidential election in late July and unleashed a brutal persecution campaign against dissidents who protested the fraudulent electoral event and its “results,” closed 2024 with a disapproval rating of 67.4 percent. Maduro is slated to begin a new fraudulently-obtained six-year presidential term on January 10, 2025.
Lastly, Peru’s leftist President Dina Boluarte was rated by respondents as the worst in South America, with 76.4 percent expressing their disapproval of the Peruvian President. Boluarte, a former member of the Marxist Free Peru party, took office and succeeded former Marxist President Pedro Castillo, who was impeached and arrested in December 2022 after he unsuccessfully attempted to dissolve Congress and stay in power via a failed autogolpe (“self-coup”). Boluarte served as Castillo’s vice president.
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