Argentina’s President Javier Milei has led his party to a landslide victory in midterm elections, after defining the first two years of his presidency with radical spending cuts and free-market reforms.
His party, La Libertad Avanza, won nearly 41 per cent of the vote, taking 13 of 24 Senate seats and 64 of the 127 lower-house seats that were contested. Speaking to supporters in Buenos Aires, Javier Milei declared that the Argentines showed that they don’t want to return to the model of failure.
Before these elections his party had just seven Senate seats and 37 seats in the lower house. U.S. president Donald Trump in a social media post congratulated President Javier Milei on his victory.
The result narrowly fell short of giving Milei a congressional majority – which remains with the Peronists by three seats – and has surprised Argentine analysts, given the recent blows to the libertarian’s popularity from corruption allegations involving his sister to the current economic crisis.
The government had downplayed expectations, considering anything between 30% and 35% a satisfactory outcome, especially after Milei’s heavy defeat in the provincial elections in Buenos Aires in September, when he lost to the Peronists by 14 percentage points.
This time, Milei’s party turned the tide, winning in Argentina’s largest electoral district, home to about 40% of the electorate.
The president hailed the US bailout as “something unprecedented, not only in Argentine history but in world history, because the US has never offered support of such magnitude”.
“Now we are focused on carrying out the reforms that Argentina needs to consolidate growth and the definitive takeoff of the country – to make Argentina great again,” the president said in Spanish, echoing the Trumpist slogan.
Trump soon offered his congratulations on Sunday night, calling the win for Milei’s party a “landslide victory”.
Speaking on a trip to Asia on Monday, Trump said Milei had a “lot of help” from the US, as he praised the unexpectedly “big win”, describing it as “a great thing”.
“He had a lot of help from us. He had a lot of help. I gave him an endorsement, a very strong endorsement,” Trump said, also crediting some of his top officials, including the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, who oversaw the financial assistance to Argentina. “We are sticking with a lot of the countries in South America. We focus very much on South America,” Trump said.