Argentina - 2025 Election
Argentina's libertarian President Javier Milei has scored a surprise victory in the country's congressional midterm elections, which serve as a test of public opinion. The results provide a boost for Milei's radical free-market economic policies. Argentine President Javier Milei’s image as a straight-talking outsider had been hurt by a series of scandals and setbacks ahead of mid-term congressional elections on 26 October 2025 . Opposition parties gained support after US President Donald Trump warned that US assistance to Argentina was contingent on Milei’s victory in the vote. Mid-term elections will go ahead to elect around half the seats in the Chamber of Deputies and a third of the seats in the Senate. The election will also offer some insight into how voters feel about Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei, who enacted drastic public spending cuts aimed at reining in inflation but which also plunged Argentina into recession.
Argentina is a federal republic consisting of 23 provinces and an autonomous federal district, the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. At the national level, the country has a presidential system that divides powers between a president, a bicameral congress, and a federal judiciary. A president is directly elected to serve as head of state and government and commander in chief of the armed forces for a four-year term and can be reelected for one consecutive term. The Argentine congress—consisting of the 257-member Chamber of Deputies and the 72-member Senate—exercises legislative powers. Deputies serve four-year terms, and half of the Chamber stands for reelection every two years. Senators serve six-year terms, and one-third of the Senate stands for reelection every two years. Argentine presidents' broad powers, including the ability to issue emergency decrees that carry the force of law without legislative approval, have led some academics to characterize Argentina's political system as a "hyper-presidentialism" in practice.
Argentina had a strong democratic tradition since returning to democracy after more than seven years of rule under a military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983. The dictatorship employed state terrorism tactics to repress popular dissent, leading to the forced disappearance of thousands of people (up to 30,000, according to some Argentine human rights groups).
There were a few reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings during the year. Federal courts continued to prosecute suspects for enforced disappearances and crimes against humanity during the 1976-83 military dictatorship. As of September, there were 15 active trials with an estimated 208 suspects. During the year, a federal court in La Plata convicted two former police officers to life sentences for crimes against humanity; a federal court in the city of Buenos Aires convicted four former police and gendarmerie officers to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity including the kidnapping, torture, and sexual abuse of 385 victims; and a court in Mar del Plata announced a new trial for 20 former military officers charged with crimes against humanity.
The Argentina Journalism Forum (FOPEA) reported that from January 1 to September 5, 2024, there were 108 incidents of violence and harassment against journalists. In September 2024, the Milei administration issued a decree under the 2016 Access to Information Law. The decree gave the executive branch greater discretion to withhold information, including visitor logs and expense reports, and restricted access to predecisional documents. Domestic press freedom watchdog organizations FOPEA and the Association of Argentine Journalistic Entities continued to warn that criminal groups “encroached” on freedom of expression by intimidating and threatening journalists, particularly in the city of Rosario, in Santa Fe Province.
At the start of 2025, pollsters and pundits were predicting a smashing success for Milei in the midterms. His huge cuts to state spending delivered Argentina’s first fiscal surplus in nearly 15 years and pulled down monthly inflation from 25.5 percent to 2 percent. Argentines celebrated relief from ever-rising prices and took comfort in a strong peso that made it cheaper for them to snap up imported goods and vacation abroad. With his approval ratings high, Milei took victory laps through Europe, Latin America and, most frequently, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, railing against the evils of socialism and the corruption of the political elite. He pushed key deregulation laws through an opposition-dominated Congress, allying with the right-wing PRO party of former President Mauricio Macri and striking deals with moderate governors. How quickly the mood turned. Milei’s aura of infallibility first began to crack in February, when he promoted a dodgy memecoin on his social media account that quickly collapsed, leading to $250 million in losses for investors. Then in August, Milei’s powerful sister was accused of taking bribes from a government medicine supplier. She denies wrongdoing. Milei suffered a blow 07 September 2025 as his party was trounced by the left in Buenos Aires provincial elections, a contest widely viewed as a test of his government’s support. The defeat came on the eve of mid-term polls, raising doubts over Milei’s political momentum. Milei vowed to "accelerate" his libertarian reforms after a crushing defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections, ahead of highly anticipated midterms. The 54-year-old economist had slashed public spending, dismissed tens of thousands of public employees and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023. He acknowledged his party's "clear defeat" by the center-left Peronist movement in the elections to the legislature of Buenos Aires province, the country's economic powerhouse.
A deflated-sounding Milei admitted to unspecified "mistakes" which he vowed to "correct" but said he would not be swayed "one millimeter" from his reform agenda. "We will deepen and accelerate it," he said at a muted election night event in the resort of Mar del Plata, where he took the stage in silence, in marked contrast to his usual dramatic entrance to rock music.
With 91 percent of the votes counted, the center-left Fuerza Patria coalition had taken over 47 percent of the vote against nearly 34 percent for Milei's ruling La Libertad Avanza (LLA), official results showed. Buenos Aires's votes are telling as a bellwether for Argentina. The province contributes more than 30 percent of Argentina's GDP and accounts for 40 percent of all eligible voters. The 13-point gap between Milei's party and the left was far greater than opinion polls had predicted. Turnout in the election was high, at around 63 percent.
The result poses major concerns for Milei, coming just six weeks before midterm elections. Some members of his party downplayed the extent of the defeat, pointing out that the LLA had nonetheless increased its share of legislators in Buenos Aires. The government went into the election under a cloud following a corruption scandal at the National Disability Agency involving the president's sister and right-hand woman, Karina Milei. In a sign of the anger among many Argentines over the affair, Milei and his sister were pelted with stones on the campaign trail outside Buenos Aires in late August, with skirmishes breaking out among supporters and opponents.
The ruling party's election drubbing came three days after Milei suffered a major setback when Congress overturned his veto of a law increasing allowances for disabled people. On the economic front, the self-described "anarcho-capitalist" is struggling also, despite success in fighting inflation and in erasing a fiscal deficit. Last week, his government began selling treasury dollars to stem the depreciation of the local currency, the peso, which had been accelerating in recent weeks despite high interest rates.
"We must learn from this (election defeat)," LLA candidate Diego Valenzuela said, claiming that the result "was due to not engaging in economic populism, which is new in Argentina." His remarks were aimed at the Peronists, accused by Milei of leading South America's second-biggest economy to ruin through excessive spending and protectionism.
Argentinian lawmarkers overturned two vetos by President Javier Milei on 02 October 2025, marking a setback for the leader ahead of the a midterm election which could shape the future of his controversial economic reforms. The Argentinian Senate invalidated his vetos on laws to increase funding for public universities and pediatric health care. The vetos had already been rejected by the lower house of Congress, the Chamber of Deputies. The development marks another blow to the budget-slashing Milei's aura of political invincibility. The opposition-controlled Senate first overturned one of his vetos in September 2025, reinstating a measure which increased spending for people with disabilities.
This came at a time when Milei — who has built his presidency on austerity measures and drastic econonic reforms — is seeing his popularity drop amid a corruption scandal and public weariness. While his reforms have tamed inflation, his dramatic welfare cuts have severely affected universities, public hospitals and pensioners. His party was defeated at the polls in Buenos Aires' provincial polls last month as a result, an outcome which was seen as indicative of the mood going into the upcoming elections. "There's a sensation of disenchantment and anger with the impact of the cutbacks," Sebastian Halperin, a political consultant in Buenos Aires, told Reuters. He noted Milei had failed to build crucial alliances to sway votes in Congress.
Milei’s leading candidate in Buenos Aires province, José Luis Espert, dropped out of the midterm race after admitting he received $200,000 from a businessman indicted in the US for drug trafficking. He says it was for consulting services. The controversies have hurt Milei’s reputation as a straight-talking outsider determined to tear down the corrupt establishment, experts say, particularly at this time of harsh austerity. “It was the first wake-up call when people started to ask, maybe (Milei and Karina) are asking us to make sacrifices that they’re not making themselves,” said Eugenia Mitchelstein, the chair of the social sciences department at Buenos Aires’s San Andrés University.
Tactical errors compounded matters. Milei ran an aggressive campaign strategy in some two dozen provincial elections in recent months that pitted a slew of unknowns from his scrappy libertarian party against more established rivals. His decision to forgo any attempt at coalition-building alienated potential political allies, who punished Milei by passing spending measures in Congress and overturning his vetoes.
The run-up to the midterms – in which half the seats in the lower house of Congress and a third of the Senate are up for grabs – has also been rough. Although veteran politician Diego Santilli was now at the top of the party’s Buenos Aires list after Espert stood down over the scandal, voters will still see Espert on the ballot after electoral authorities ruled it was too late to print new ones. The other Buenos Aires candidate, Karen Reichardt, is a former model and actor who had come under fire for old social media posts attacking national soccer hero Lionel Messi and insulting her political enemies with racially insensitive language. She did not respond to a request for comment.
Investors dumped Argentine bonds and sold off the peso, prompting the central bank to burn through its foreign currency reserves to prop up the currency. Trump and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stepped in 09 October 2025 to save their closest political ally in the region. The US Treasury bought up pesos – the currency that even Argentines distrust – and confirmed a $20 billion swap line to Argentina’s central bank on what Bessent called a “bridge” to the midterms. Trump said the US would even boost beef imports from Argentina to bring down US meat prices, and Bessent said he was working on another $20 billion loan from private banks.
But not even such dramatic moves from the world’s biggest economy have restored faith in the famously volatile peso. Argentine investors – who can more easily take money out of Argentina since Milei’s government scrapped capital controls this year – continued ditching pesos. The currency slid to a new record low of 1,476 per dollar 20 October 2025. “It’s the managerial class changing their pesos furiously into dollars who are sabotaging Milei,” said Christopher Ecclestone, a strategist with investment bank Hallgarten & Company.
Anyone who watched US President Donald Trump vow to condition financial aid to cash-strapped Argentina on the outcome of a “very big” and “very important” vote in the South American country would be forgiven for thinking that his close ideological ally, Argentine President Javier Milei, was up for reelection. Now the explosive comments, combined with a dizzying series of scandals and setbacks for Milei, have cranked up the pressure on Argentina’s libertarian president and transformed the limited vote into a major political test that could help determine the fate of Milei’s free-market experiment.
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