Facundo Iglesia contributed reporting from outside LLA’s campaign headquarters

President Javier Milei’s La Libertad Avanza (LLA) was the most voted electoral front in Argentina’s 2025 midterm elections with 40.8% with 91% of the vote counted at a national level, a landslide victory for the government. The percentage means LLA will comfortably get a third of the Lower House seats, a key threshold for blocking opposition bills and backing presidential decrees.

Argentines voted to renew half of the Lower House (127 out of 257) and a third of the Senate (24 out of 72).

LLA will gain 64 new seats in the lower house, taking its total to 92 after adding the 28 deputies it had. This number is well above the threshold of 84 deputies needed to make up a third of the chamber. This will make the libertarian bloc the largest, surpassing Peronism. 

Along with its ally, the right-wing party PRO, which will have 25 deputies by December, it will be considerably easier for the government to move its agenda forward. Nevertheless, the libertarians will have to continue negotiating with other blocs in Congress for the next two years, as the 2027 presidential election will also include a partial renovation of lawmakers.

LLA ran as part of a coalition with PRO, which granted the ruling party a significant electoral boost. In Congress, the so-called “friendly opposition” blocs, such as Unión Cívica Radical, will still determine the success or failure of the government’s initiatives.

This is the first time a ruling party has won a midterm election in Argentina since 2017.

‘Let’s stick it out’

Outside LLA’s campaign headquarters in central Buenos Aires, hundreds of supporters were celebrating by a giant screen showing Milei’s image, music blaring. 

“We are here because we are free,” Oscar Alfredo, 64, a retired truck driver, told the Herald. He said the result didn’t surprise him. “You see, I have great faith in God and I believe that this man [Milei] was chosen by God.” He said that, even if the pension cuts affected him and he thinks the current economic situation is “critical,” he supports the government. 

“This president told us that we have to tighten our belts and stick it out. Well, let’s stick it out. Maybe I won’t see the fruits of this, because the years are passing very quickly for me now,” he said. “I do think about those who come after us, the young people.”

Milei’s supporters shouted chants mocking Peronist former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is under house arrest over a corruption conviction. Each time a government official or lawmaker arrived, supporters rushed to the fences, shouting and trying to snap photos of figures such as Economy Minister Luis Caputo and Chief of Staff Guillermo Francos. Smoke flares billowed and passing cars and buses honked in support. 

Jacqueline Lamas, a 42-year-old businesswoman from Villa Crespo, held up a purple cardboard chainsaw she said she made herself and had been autographed by Milei. It symbolized, she said, “the end of Kirchnerism and the political caste.” 

Lamas said she supports the president because she wants Argentina to be “a real country, without drug traffickers, without human trafficking, without missing children.” She feels the economy is doing well, and Argentines are struggling only because “people don’t want to work,” adding that “there are jobs available.”

A breakdown of the numbers

Peronism, which ran in most provinces under the name Fuerza Patria, came in second with 24.3% of the vote at a national level for deputies. They will have 79 once the new congressional term begins in December, although they could also see gains from local Peronist parties that chose not to run under the Fuerza Patria front. These provincial forces got 15 seats, potentially taking total Peronist deputies to 94, just above LLA.  Between the two, they got 32% of the vote.

LLA got almost 43% of the overall vote in the provinces that elected senators, which include Chaco, Entre Ríos, Neuquén, Río Negro, Salta, Santiago del Estero, Tierra del Fuego, and Buenos Aires City. This result means the ruling party will get 19 seats, short of a third of the Senate (24). Fuerza Patria got 23% of the vote for senators and will remain the largest bloc in that chamber with 25 senators, when including one from a local Peronist front in Entre Ríos.

Voter turnout in this election was one of the lowest since the return of democracy in Argentina in 1983, with 67.8%. The lowest was in 2021, when the voter turnout was 67.7% for the primaries. 

Revenge in Buenos Aires province

Results took a surprising turn in Buenos Aires province, where LLA beat Peronism with 41.5% against 40.8%. The province is a Peronist stronghold, and most surveys had Fuerza Patria winning there. These projections were based on Peronism’s good performance in the provincial elections in September and the fact that LLA’s main candidate, José Luis Espert, resigned over ties with an alleged drug trafficker. 

In Buenos Aires City, LLA comfortably reached first place with 47% for the deputies election, followed by Fuerza Patria with 27%, a staggering 20-point difference. The senate race in the Argentine capital also saw LLA get a thundering victory, with Security Minister Patricia Bullrich leading the ticket to get 50% of the votes, followed by Fuerza Patria with 30%.