Milei’s popularity has dropped from 60% to 39% in 7 months. Photo: Resumen.
By Francisco Delgado RodrĂguez – Sep 10, 2025
The results of the parliamentary elections in the province of Buenos Aires could mark a turning point in Argentine politics, to the detriment ofLa Libertad Avanza, the party structure of Argentine President Javier Milei.
Fuerza Patria, the Peronists, won comfortably with 47.07% vs. 33.82% for La Libertad Avanza; this gives them a provincial parliamentary majority, with 13 senators and 21 deputies. And this is not happening just anywhere, but in a territory that accounts for almost 40% of the country’s voters.
Certainly, Peronism, in the case of Fuerza Patria, has always controlled this territory in the past, including the provincial government and most of the municipalities, but it now appears to have made further gains, notably winning the so-called fourth electoral section, after 20 years of failure, where there are 19 municipalities in the northern part of the province.
This convincing victory was preceded by positive results for the Peronist opposition in provincial parliamentary elections in CĂłrdoba and in the election of delegates to reform the provincial constitution of Santa Fe.
Regardless of the purposes of these electoral contests, Peronism won in these provinces where it had lost in the 2023 presidential elections, as well as in important places such as the provincial capital of Santa Fe. Both territories account for around 16% of the national electorate. In other words, together with Buenos Aires, the Peronists reap territorial support where approximately 56% of Argentines vote.
The issue is not limited to these provincial processes. In the balance of votes in Congress at the national or federal level, there is also a noticeable sustained loss for Mileism, which is often joined by the right-wing PRO, led by former president Mauricio Macri, and factions of the historic Radical Civic Union.
Several dynamics interact in the Argentine Congress, where sometimes the results of what is agreed upon have little or nothing to do with the issue under debate, and more to do with the exchange of favors between the federal government and provincial governors, who decide behind the scenes what legislators, selected and supported from each province of origin, will do. Under this logic, Milei had managed to impose decisions, despite not having his own caucus capable of agreeing on anything.
But this also seems to have come to an end. Just a few days before the vote in Buenos Aires, the Senate rejected the presidential veto on legislation that imposed support resources for people with disabilities. Previously, legislators had rejected five presidential decrees on other occasions and, to make matters worse, due to its symbolic weight, they reactivated the investigative commission on the $Libra cryptocurrency case.
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And speaking of that cryptocurrency, the issue serves to understand the sinister side of La Libertad Avanza, which owes part of its popularity to Milei’s inflammatory rhetoric against the “caste,” understood as the corrupt politicians who have bled the country dry; that is, precisely what Milei and company are.
Pensioners and workers continue to be in the streets of Argentina.
The president, the visible head of that “caste,” has been involved in corruption scandals such as this million-dollar $Libra scam, which is even being tried in courts abroad, or the latest and most dazzling one involving the president’s sister and secretary general, Karina Milei, and other crooks close to the president, who organized a scheme to embezzle money from none other than the National Disability Agency (ANDIS), the very agency whose resources Congress is trying to save.
The “caste,” the real one, is also made up of and led by a stale and unscrupulous oligarchy, which built up a figure like Javier Milei to try to dismantle the kind of welfare state promoted over the last 20 years by Kirchnerism, reducing the state to the management of a repressive force that guarantees its dismantling.
This oligarchy or “royal caste” is made up of a select and concentrated group of millionaire businessmen who hope to control even more sectors such as energy, steel, infrastructure and airports, technology, finance, pharmaceuticals, and the main media, among others. Most of them are closely associated with US and European transnational corporations, and some are even listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
What happened in Buenos Aires may be a prelude to what is expected on Sunday, October 26, when national legislative elections will be held, which are key to defining the balance of power in Congress. Milei hopes, of course, to win a majority, which he did not obtain in the presidential elections, when part of that legislature was also elected and which, as can be seen, is behaving in an increasingly elusive manner.
Milei is also going downhill in terms of popularity, falling from more than 60% in January 2025 to around 39% in August, a drop that can even be seen in the parallel universe of social media, where the occupant of the Casa Rosada spends most of his presidential time and had a significant accumulation in his favor.
And it was to be expected, Milei is the president who in the shortest time imposed widely unpopular measures, not only in their content, which would be enough, but also in the way he communicated them with hyper-aggressive rhetoric, routinely and crudely disparaging his opponents, an example of when discourtesy shows a lack of courage.
The foreign policy of the current Argentine government deserves a separate analysis because it has less weight in the electoral will of Argentines. But it is useful to establish its shamefully subordinate nature to the US, which includes support for the Zionist genocide in Gaza or the worst causes in Our America.
In any case, what happened in Buenos Aires on September 7 is one more step in what many hope will happen in Argentina: the political cornering or weakening of one of that country’s worst leaders, paving the way for his departure from office, either through the ballot box or a popular uprising, as happened with Fernando De La Rúa 24 years ago.
Predicting what will happen in this southern country, so close to Cuba, is a very complicated task. It is well known that it is not enough for Milei to work towards his own defeat; those calling for this outcome must know how to defeat him. But that part of the story will have to be asked of the good people of Argentina, those who believe that only unity can move mountains.
