Javier Milei won the election to renew Congress this Sunday with 40.8% of the votes. It has been an unexpected triumph due to its magnitude and presented as epic by the far-right. He has had enough reasons to celebrate. After four months of horror for the Casa Rosada, with high-profile cases of corruption and even , the Government feared that it would be closer to 30% than 40%. Milei has even celebrated a very close victory in the province of Buenos Aires, where just two months ago, in the elections for provincial legislators, the extreme right has also clearly won in the capital and large provinces such as Córdoba, Mendoza, Entre Ríos and Santa Fe.
“Today the people decided to leave behind 100 years of decadence, today the construction of the great Argentina begins,” Milei said in his first triumphal speech. The president thanked his ministers one by one, even those who have already submitted their resignation, such as IN and Justice, and then called to join forces with the opposition.
“As of December 10, we will have 101 deputies instead of 37. And in the Senate we will go from six senators to 20. As of December 10, we will have the most reformist Congress in Argentine history. We are happy to know that in many provinces the second force is not Kirchnerism, but the provincial ruling parties, rational forces that know that one plus one equals two. That is why we invite the governors to discuss these agreements,” he added. The president came on stage in a jacket and tie and not in black leather, “dressed as a president,” as he often says, and his tone was calm.
The Buenos Aires result explains a good part of the triumph of the extreme right. It is the largest district in the country, with almost 40% of the national census, and reversing the defeat against Peronism was not even in the Government’s most optimistic forecasts. Libertad Avanza had not even been able to include on the ballot the photo of its candidate in that district, Diego Santilli, because the person chosen by Milei, José Luis Espert, resigned due to alleged corruption without enough time to reprint them.
The Government based its campaign around the fear of a return of Peronism in its Kirchnerist version. Donald Trump helped in this strategy: two weeks ago, he said that the 40,000 million dollars he offered to Milei – 20,000 in the form of a currency exchange and the rest as a private loan – He later qualified his statements, but his conditions were enough for Argentine bonds to collapse and the peso to depreciate. If the idea was to generate fear in the electorate, it was very efficient.
Peronism has unexpectedly lost in all its versions in 18 of the 24 Argentine provinces. It added 31.7% of the votes, a percentage that could grow slightly if other related groups are added. The result will allow Peronism to maintain the current 99 deputies in December, but it runs the risk of losing the first minority if Libertad Avanza adds to its 80 deputies the 24 of Pro, the party of former president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019). In the Senate he was not so lucky: he will have 28 senators against the current 34. La Libertad Avanza will go from 6 senators to 18.
The six governors who tried without success to create an alternative to the extreme right and Peronism under the umbrella of a new group they called United Provinces have been big losers. Their intention was to become arbitrators within a polarized Congress. The eight deputies they obtained will not be enough for that task. Given the result, it was evident that the votes they expected went to the extreme right.
A war between good and evil
Milei’s strategy of reducing the election to a war between good, represented by him, and evil, that is, Kirchnerism, has been a success. For political scientist Juan Negri, from the Torcuato Di Tella University, the polarization made “a good part of the population prefer to vote for Milei rather than a return of Peronism.” “Peronism, furthermore, does not convey that it is an opposition with a plan for the future, but only says that everything Milei does is wrong. His success in the September elections in the province of Buenos Aires seems to have mobilized many anti-Peronist voters,” he says. According to the final count, participation grew nine points compared to that local election.
Despite the victory, Milei will have to go into “recalculating” mode. It does not have its own quorum in Congress and will have to forge new internal alliances. “Milei’s main challenge is to quickly restructure the Cabinet and demonstrate that he is capable of building political bridges to guarantee governability in the last two years of his mandate, which are going to be, without a doubt, the most difficult,” says Patricio Giusto, director of the consulting firm Political Diagnosis. “And second, not to continue delaying the redesign of the economic program, which today is artificially supported by an emergency bailout from the US Treasury,” he adds.
Milei had presented election day as a fight for political survival, an unusual all-or-nothing bet for an election that hardly ever marks society’s thermometer towards the management of the moment. But the current cycle is not a common one in Argentina: Milei came to power two years ago with barely any parliamentary representation, without a single provincial governor of his own and a team with no technical capacity and little experience. He hoped, therefore, that the polls would grant him a little peace in the daily struggle for governability.
And he achieved it, despite the storms. Starting in June, they followed one another and he even had to sacrifice his main candidate for deputy in Buenos Aires due to links with a businessman imprisoned for drug trafficking. The economy began to falter at the pace of the scandals. Without international reserves, investors fled Argentine bonds and the peso collapsed. Added to the economic paralysis derived from the adjustment, the social mood changed rapidly. Milei then hugged Donald Trump. In September, defeat came in Buenos Aires. The sum of calamities could not be worse.
The Government can now say that it is back. A measured Milei called for forging alliances with the “rational” opposition. That was the express request of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that of dollars. And it is also the condition that came from Washington. For the United States, Argentina is now an unconditional ally in the region. “I prefer to extend an exchange line [de divisas] “We have to shoot at the boats that transport drugs, as we have to do, that leave Venezuela,” Bessent said on Sunday.
Eyes are also on former president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), a key ally of the far right who distanced himself from the presidential mistreatment. Marci voted on Sunday around noon and remembered that Milei has his phone number and that starting Monday she can call him whenever she wants. “I am available to talk about how to generate governability and bring about change, but we have not talked about ministers. Yes [ Milei] “He needs something, he’s going to call me,” he said at the foot of the urn. Macri’s mention of possible changes in ministers was not coincidental. Three of the current ones must leave their positions in December because they will take office as deputies or senators.
The fight between his main advisor, Santiago Caputo, and the president’s sister, Karina Milei, is the other disaster that weighs on the libertarian administration. Milei has until now kept the dispute between his strategist and the woman who is, in addition to his most powerful official, his emotional support under the rug. But on Monday he will no longer be able to continue kicking the problem forward. Each represents opposing groups within the administration, which at times has been paralyzed by ministers and secretaries’ fear of dying in battle. In any case, Milei will no longer be the same starting this Monday.
