Voters back Milei in midterm elections

President Javier Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, has won more than 40% of the votes cast for Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of congress.

That’s according to tallies in local media using figures from electoral authorities, based on 97% of votes counted. At 67.9%, turnout was the lowest in a national election in over 40 years.

La Libertad Avanza also took six of the eight provinces that voted for the Senate on Sunday.

Half of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies and one-third of the Senate seats were up for grabs in Sunday’s midterm elections. Executive positions, such as the president and vice president, were not on the ballot.

Milei celebrates ‘turning point’ for Argentina

At his party headquarters in the capital, Buenos Aires, Milei burst onstage and sang a few lines of the death-metal tune that has become his anthem in a raspy baritone: “I am the king of a lost world!”

He called the results a “turning point” for the country and vowed to charge ahead with his reform agenda.

“Today we reached a turning point, today begins the construction of a great Argentina,” he told supporters at a victory party.

“The Argentine people left decadence behind and opted for progress,” Milei said, thanking “all those who supported the ideas of freedom to make Argentina great again.”

Milei said his party went from holding just 37 seats to more than 101 in the 257-seat Chamber of Deputies after Sunday’s vote.

In the 72-seat Senate, he said La Libertad Avanza picked up 14 more seats to end up with 20 senators.

“God bless Argentina,” Milei’s spokesperson Manuel Adorni wrote as a reaction on X.

The center-left Peronist opposition, which had been riding high after winning provincial elections in Buenos Aires in September, trailed with just over 31%, the almost-complete results showed.

Milei will still need support of other parties

The result strengthens Milei’s hand as he moves ahead with his campaign to downsize the state and deregulate the economy.

His administration has cut tens of thousands of public sector jobs, frozen public works, cut spending on health, education and pensions and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023.

Milei will still need to forge alliances in the congress with the center-right to pass legislation, however.

The elections were the first national test of Milei’s support since he won office two years ago on a promise to revive the long-ailing Argentine economy through a series of painful reforms.

The run-up to the election was marked by a run on the national currency, the peso, that forced Milei to seek a bailout from US President Donald Trump, a close ally.

The US promised an unprecedented $40 billion package of aid, but the assistance came with a warning from Trump to Argentines that he would not “be generous” if Sunday’s election did not go Milei’s way.