{"id":227806,"date":"2025-10-27T08:03:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T08:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/227806\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T08:03:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T08:03:08","slug":"javier-milei-hails-tipping-point-as-his-far-right-party-wins-argentinas-midterm-elections-argentina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/227806\/","title":{"rendered":"Javier Milei hails \u2018tipping point\u2019 as his far-right party wins Argentina\u2019s midterm elections | Argentina"},"content":{"rendered":"

The party of Argentina\u2019s far-right president, Javier Milei, has won Sunday\u2019s midterm elections after a campaign in which US president Donald Trump announced a $40bn bailout for the country<\/a> and made continued aid conditional on the victory<\/a> of his Argentinian counterpart.<\/p>\n

With more than 95% of ballots counted, Milei\u2019s 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\u2019s<\/a> nearly two years in power.<\/p>\n

The Peronist opposition, Fuerza Patria, secured 31.67%.<\/p>\n

While the result still falls short of giving Milei a congressional majority \u2013 which remains with the Peronists \u2013 it is being widely described as surprising by Argentinian analysts, given the recent blows to the libertarian\u2019s popularity from corruption allegations involving his sister<\/a> to the ongoing economic crisis.<\/p>\n

The government itself had downplayed expectations, considering anything between 30% and 35% a satisfactory outcome, especially after Milei\u2019s heavy defeat in September\u2019s Buenos Aires provincial elections, when he lost to the Peronists by 14 percentage points.<\/p>\n

This time, however, Milei\u2019s party turned the tide, winning in Argentina\u2019s largest electoral district, home to about 40% of the electorate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am the king of a lost world,\u201d Milei sang as he took the stage before hundreds of supporters at a hotel in Buenos Aires. He began his speech by saying: \u201cToday we passed the tipping point \u2013 the construction of a great Argentina begins.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president hailed the US bailout as \u201csomething unprecedented, not only in Argentine history but in world history, because the US has never offered support of such magnitude\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we are focused on carrying out the reforms that Argentina needs to consolidate growth and the definitive take-off of the country \u2013 to make Argentina great again,\u201d the president said in Spanish, echoing the Trumpist slogan.<\/p>\n

Trump soon offered his congratulations on Sunday night, calling the win for Milei\u2019s party a \u201clandslide victory\u201d, adding: \u201cOur confidence in him was justified by the people of Argentina.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s party secured 64 lower house seats and 12 in the senate.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Milei began his administration almost two years ago with his \u201cchainsaw\u201d spending cuts, slashing tens of thousands of public jobs<\/a> and freezing investment in infrastructure, healthcare, education and even the supply of medicines for pensioners.<\/p>\n

He managed to bring down inflation from more than 200% in 2023 to about 30% in September, achieving the country\u2019s first fiscal surplus in 14 years. Economic activity grew by 0.3% in August 2025 after three consecutive months of decline.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The libertarian\u2019s 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\u2019s leading candidates withdrew from Sunday\u2019s election after admitting to having received $200,000 from a businessman accused of drug trafficking in the US.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s stance was seen by many in the country as interference in the election, and some predicted that \u2013 due to anti-American sentiment among parts of the population \u2013 US support could backfire on Milei.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The party of Argentina\u2019s far-right president, Javier Milei, has won Sunday\u2019s midterm elections after a campaign in which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-227806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}