To the no-doubt teeth-gnashing fury of the left chattering classes, Argentine President Javier Milei just keeps on winning. Not only is he rapidly turning around decades of socialist economic collapse – inflation has dropped by 66 per cent – but the president is going from political strength to strength.
Argentine President Javier Milei’s government received a show of support on Sunday as candidates he has endorsed took the lead in a legislative election in the city of Buenos Aires.
With over 99 per cent of polling stations counted, Milei’s list of candidates led by his spokesperson Manuel Adorni was leading the results for the local legislature with 30.1 per cent of the votes, according to official results.
Poll favourite, leftist Leandro Santoro, is trailing on 27 per cent. Silvia Lospennato, of former Milei allies the PRO party, is in third place, with 16 per cent of the votes.
Sunday’s election for half of the 60 seats in the capital’s legislature was seen as the first important electoral test for Milei, who took office in late 2023.
“It wasn’t simply a local election,” Adorni said on stage. “It was an election between two models ... The model of the political class, the model of a privileged few, and the model of freedom. And today, freedom won – once again.”
Milei’s administration had sought to frame Sunday’s local election as a referendum on his government’s national economic achievements, touting his success in bringing down inflation and securing the country’s first budget surplus in 14 years last year, said Mariel Fornoni, political analyst at the consulting firm Management & Fit.
The result is even more impressive given that the centre-right vote was at risk of being split between former allies, with former president Mauricio Macri’s Republican Proposal (PRO) party running against Milei-backed candidates.
The libertarian leader’s party defeated Mauricio Macri’s PRO bloc Sunday in a Buenos Aires City Hall election, weakening the former president in a stronghold his party has governed uninterrupted for the past two decades.
Milei’s top candidate, chief spokesman Manuel Adorni, won the vote in a landslide over Macri’s choice to lead the ticket, Silvia Lospennato, in a race seen as a bellwether for national midterm elections in October […]
“The PRO’s third-place finish confirms that the party can no longer lay claim to being Argentina’s agent of change,” said Joaquín Bagues, Managing Director at Buenos Aires-based brokerage Grit Capital Group.
The Peronist left, even when able to capitalise on the splitting of the centre-right vote, still lost badly.
Still, Milei would be wise to mend fences with Macri and PRO.
Macri’s lawmakers were instrumental in pushing through his omnibus legislative package and shielding his executive orders from vetoes, while Milei’s La Libertad Avanza held just 15 per cent of the seats in Congress.
“Since Milei’s rise to the presidency, there has been a disagreement between him and Macri regarding the balance of power,” said political analyst Alejandro Catterberg from top polling firm Poliarquía. “Macri believed that the extreme institutional weakness of the La Libertad Avanza government would lead to a sort of co-governance with him. The government believes that Macri and his party are politically worn out, and that their voter base has already shifted its support to Milei.”
Centre-right supporters are hoping that the two will be able to reunite before the October mid-terms and keep the Peronist Kirchner bloc from regaining power.
