The party of Argentina’s far-right president, Javier Milei, has won Sunday’s midterm elections after a campaign in which US president Donald Trump announced a $40bn bailout for the country and made continued aid conditional on the victory of his Argentinian counterpart.
With more than 95% of ballots counted, Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, won 40.84% of the nationwide vote in an election widely seen as a de facto referendum on the self-styled anarcho-capitalist’s nearly two years in power.
The Peronist opposition, Fuerza Patria, secured 31.67%.
While the result still falls short of giving Milei a congressional majority – which remains with the Peronists – it is being widely described as surprising by Argentinian analysts, given the recent blows to the libertarian’s popularity from corruption allegations involving his sister to the ongoing economic crisis.
The government itself had downplayed expectations, considering anything between 30% and 35% a satisfactory outcome, especially after Milei’s heavy defeat in September’s Buenos Aires provincial elections, when he lost to the Peronists by 14 percentage points.
Related: Do populists always crash the economy?
This time, however, Milei’s party turned the tide, winning in Argentina’s largest electoral district, home to about 40% of the electorate.
“I am the king of a lost world,” Milei sang as he took the stage before hundreds of supporters at a hotel in Buenos Aires. He began his speech by saying: “Today we passed the tipping point – the construction of a great Argentina begins.”
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 take-off of the country – to make Argentina great again,” the president said in Spanish, echoing the Trumpist slogan.
Up for grabs in the election were 127 of the 257 seats in the lower house and a third of the senate, 24 of its 72 seats. Milei’s party secured 64 lower house seats and 12 in the senate.
The new seats in the lower house, combined with those already held, allow the government to meet its main goal for this election: securing at least a third of the lower house to sustain presidential vetoes.
Related: Do populists always crash the economy?
Milei began his administration almost two years ago with his “chainsaw” spending cuts, slashing tens of thousands of public jobs and freezing investment in infrastructure, healthcare, education and even the supply of medicines for pensioners.
He managed to bring down inflation from more than 200% in 2023 to about 30% in September, achieving the country’s first fiscal surplus in 14 years. Economic activity grew by 0.3% in August 2025 after three consecutive months of decline.
But purchasing power has plummeted: most Argentinians say they are struggling to make ends meet, more than 250,000 jobs have been lost and about 18,000 businesses have closed.
The libertarian’s popularity also took a hit when Milei promoted a cryptocurrency that later collapsed; his sister and most powerful cabinet member, Karina Milei, was implicated in an alleged corruption scheme; and one of his party’s leading candidates withdrew from Sunday’s election after admitting to having received $200,000 from a businessman accused of drug trafficking in the US.
To prevent the peso from devaluing, the government burned through its dollar reserves, even after taking a $20bn loan (of which $14bn has already been disbursed) from the International Monetary Fund, and was forced to turn to Trump, who came to the rescue with a $40bn bailout.
Trump’s stance was seen by many in the country as interference in the election, and some predicted that – due to anti-American sentiment among parts of the population – US support could backfire on Milei.
Although voting is compulsory, turnout was the lowest since the return to democracy in 1983, at 67.85%, surpassing the previous record low of 71% set in 2021.
