Argentina’s President Javier Milei celebrates after winning in legislative midterm elections in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on October 26, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AP

The party of Argentina’s Libertarian President Javier Milei suffered a sweeping setback Sunday (September 7, 2025) in Buenos Aires provincial elections that are viewed as a barometer for how the party will perform in congressional midterms and a key test for the embattled President.

Mr. Milei’s recently formed Libertarian Party lagged with nearly 34% of the vote, with the majority of votes counted.

Peronism, the ideologically flexible populist movement that has held sway in Argentina for decades, leads polls with nearly 47% of the vote.

The results were a significant blow to Mr. Milei, who has made radical changes in Argentina’s perpetually crisis-stricken economy. While the peso has stabilised from previously soaring inflation, harsh scarcity measures have been felt by much of the South American nation’s working class.

Eyes were on the local election because the province is polarised between the political currents and seen as an indication of how the balance is tipping before congressional elections next month.

“This result is a key data point to understand the social mood — where the opposition stands, the state of Peronism and the level of support for the government in Argentina’s most important electoral district,” Juan Cruz Díaz, the head of Cefeidas Group, a consultancy in Buenos Aires, said.

“While not the main national election in October, it is nonetheless a wake-up call for the government, and how it reacts will be crucial to understanding the evolving political map.”

The leader of the Peronism movement, former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, was quick to gloat on social media and take digs at the loose-lipped leader, who has long been compared with President Donald Trump.

“Did you see that Milei?” she wrote on X, railing on his economic cuts and controversial statements the President has made.

“Get out of your bubble, brother… things are getting heavy.”

The test comes came at a tough time for Mr. Milei.

A bribery scandal has rocked the nation, entangling Mr. Milei’s politically powerful sister and undercutting the president’s image as a political outsider pitted against the corrupt Peronist elite. Milei denies the allegations that his sister took kickbacks from pharmaceutical contracts.

The opposition-dominated Congress has started to turn against Milei’s harsh cuts to social programmes, overriding his veto on raising disability benefits and approving bills that boost scant funding for health care and universities.

Adding to the pressure, Argentina’s economy is shrinking, consumer confidence is falling, unemployment is rising and interest rates are soaring to record highs as the government repeatedly intervenes in the currency market to prop up the peso and hold down inflation in hopes of placating cash-strapped voters.

As a result, Mr. Milei hasn’t built up enough foreign currency reserves to assure global markets that he can make good on his promise to transform this nine-time serial defaulter into a normal country capable of servicing its debts.

“Milei has a very strong ideology, and his vision is that the state has to have a minimal impact and investments have to come from the private sector. But that hasn’t materialised yet,” Ana Iparraguirre, an Argentine political analyst and partner at Washington-based strategy firm GBAO, said.

Sunday’s (September 7, 2025) vote to elect 69 provincial lawmakers and councillors in dozens of municipalities will not change national policy, nor will it affect the national Congress that holds its midterm elections to renew half of the lower house and a third of the Senate in late October.

But the election has offered foreign investors important clues about whether Mr. Milei’s party can gain enough seats in Congress to push through the president’s radical economic overhaul.

Despite the headwinds, it was unclear how things were going to swing until results rolled in Sunday (September 7, 2025) night.

The president has maintained an important level of support by fulfilling his flagship campaign pledge to bring down Argentina’s sky-high inflation rate. And his rivals — whose reckless spending helped deliver the crisis that he inherited — are in disarray.

Former President Fernandez, who pulled Peronism to the left during her 2007-2015 tenure and remains its most powerful leader, has been banned from politics for life and placed under house arrest over a corruption conviction.

The party’s future leadership remains uncertain. The movement has struggled to articulate a clear political vision beyond opposition to Milei or economic policy beyond the same patchwork of price controls and cash handouts.

Nonetheless, a sputtering economy and ballooning government corruption scandal have given a jolt of optimism to Peronists in the very place the movement was born in the 1940s.

Published – September 08, 2025 07:14 am IST

Protesters throw plants at Argentina’s President Javier Milei (R), his sister, Secretary General of the Presidency Karina Milei (unseen), the ruling party’s candidate for deputy, Jose Luis Espert (L), and other officials and candidates during a motorcade in Lomas de Zamora, Buenos Aires province, Argentina, on August 27, 2025
| Photo Credit: AFP

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Argentina’s economy minister and the anti-establishment upstart he faces in a presidential runoff next month began competing Monday to shore up the moderate voters they need.

Economy Minister Sergio Massa earned almost seven points more than chainsaw-wielding economist and freshman lawmaker Javier Milei in Sunday’s vote. Most polls had shown Mr. Massa slightly trailing, as voters had been expected to punish him for triple-digit inflation that has eaten away at purchasing power and boosted poverty.

On November 19, voters will either choose Mr. Massa, despite the economic deterioration that took place on his watch, or place their hopes in a self-described anarcho-capitalist who promises a drastic shake-up of South America’s second-largest economy.

Mr. Milei’s fiery rhetoric and radical proposals — like slashing subsidies that benefit a large swath of the population and replacing the local currency with the dollar — galvanised die-hard supporters, but cost him support among more moderate voters.

Mr. Massa focused his messaging in the latter part of the campaign on how Mr. Milei’s budget-slashing chainsaw would negatively affect citizens already struggling to make ends meet, with a particular focus on how much public transportation prices in Buenos Aires would increase without subsidies, said Mariel Fornoni of the political consulting firm Management and Fit.

That “had a significant impact and evidently instilled more fear than anything else,” Ms. Fornoni said.

Mr. Massa once again showed his Peronist party’s power to mobilise Argentine voters. A political movement named after former President Juan Domingo Perón that has both left- and right-wing factions but broadly believes in social justice and workers’ rights, Peronism has been a dominant force and in this election cycle emerged as the only viable left-leaning option.

Right-wing votes were divided between Mr. Milei, former Security Minister Patricia Bullrich of the main opposition coalition and another candidate, Cordoba province’s Governor Juan Schiaretti. Ms. Bullrich finished third in the field of five candidates, and the runoff will be decided by where her voters ultimately migrate.

She said in her concession speech Sunday night that she wouldn’t congratulate Mr. Massa on his victory because he was part of “Argentina’s worst government,” and that her coalition would never support “the mafias that have destroyed this country.” She stopped short of endorsing Mr. Milei, however.

During the campaign, Mr. Milei harshly criticised Ms. Bullrich as part of the entrenched elite that required purging, but he sought to appeal to her voters in a radio interview Monday, suggesting that they should focus on the bigger picture.

“Everyone who wants to change Argentina, who wants to embrace the ideas of freedom, are welcome,” Mr. Milei said. “It’s not a matter of labels; it’s a matter of who wants to be on this side.”

Asked in a news conference Monday whether he foresees challenges in siphoning support away from Ms. Bullrich, Mr. Massa responded that “leaders aren’t the owners of votes” and that several views espoused by Mr. Milei “have nothing to do with our culture and the values of the average Argentine citizen.”

Mr. Massa also said he would not want his government to be characterized as only Peronist.

“I believe it’s a mistake to suggest that the upcoming phase should be tied solely to Peronism. We are heading toward a government of national unity. I will call upon the best from various political forces, regardless of their origin,” Mr. Massa said.

Mr. Massa had already told voters that he inherited a bad economic situation exacerbated by a devastating drought that decimated exports. He reassured them that the worst was past.

With nearly all ballots counted Monday, Mr. Massa, 51, had 36.7% of the vote and Mr. Milei, 53, had 30%. Ms. Bullrich got 23.8%

In his radio interview, Mr. Milei characterised Mr. Massa’s results as the minister’s “ceiling” and said his showing marked a “floor”.

Mauro Salvatore, a 23-year-old programmer, said outside Milei’s campaign headquarters Sunday night that he is optimistic Mr. Milei will pick up the votes that went to Bullrich in the first round.

“We have a clear possibility. We find ourselves in a situation we knew wouldn’t be easy, but you can see the Argentine people are tired and really want change, independent of whether it will be Milei or Bullrich,” said Mr. Salvatore. “We have a lot of faith that some of Bullrich’s voters can be taken, given it’s understood they have more inclination toward Milei’s ideas than Massa’s.”

Analysts, however, questioned whether those votes would automatically transfer to him. Some of the more progressive elements of Ms. Bullrich’s coalition were already making clear Monday they would not support Mr. Milei, who has raged against the so-called “political caste,” vowed to eliminate half the government ministries and slash public spending.

And some analysts warned a runoff scenario may not be conducive to Mr. Milei’s combative style.

Mr. Milei is “an inexperienced candidate, lacking political expertise, who perhaps may not have the capacity to understand that the current scenario will require him to moderate, build political agreements, and appeal to voters who might ask for changes in his political proposal,” said Lucas Romero, head of Synopsis, a local political consultancy.

Mr. Milei’s casting himself as a culture warrior against the creep of the so-called “socialist agenda” appears to be a headwind, said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America Program at the Washington-based Wilson Center. Mr. Milei has been endorsed by Brazil’s former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and says he shares a common mission with former U.S. President Donald Trump. Some supporters wear hats that read “Make Argentina Great Again”.

Mr. Gedan described Milei’s opposition to abortion and gun control, among other positions, as “out of sync with Argentine society”.

Sovereign bonds plunged Monday and there was a selloff in Argentine equities as the market predicted that Mr. Massa’s first-round surprise means the government has little incentive to correct any of the economy’s imbalances for now. In the run-up to the vote, Mr. Massa boosted welfare programs and implemented tax cuts that benefited almost all registered workers, going against calls from the International Monetary Fund for austerity and removal of subsidies.

Mr. Massa “was able to build over the last two months through some tax holidays and other giveaways that could be fairly deemed populist,” said Brian Winter, a longtime Argentina expert and vice president of the New York-based Council of the Americas. “It’s going to be really interesting to hear what he says in the next few weeks, because he will need to win over some more moderate voters in order to win.”