Decisive win for Milei’s La Libertad Avanza in key midterm election

President Javier Milei won a decisive victory in Sunday's midterm elections, boosting his flagging reform agenda and jumpstarting the second half of his term in office.

Milei's La Libertad Avanza (LLA) rebounded from a series of setbacks to take 40.84 percent of the votes cast for members of the lower house Chamber of Deputies and upper house Senate, according to official results based on 90 percent of votes counted.

According to partial results, the opposition Fuerza Patria (Peronist) coalition had around 31.64 percent. In third place was Provincias Unidas, a centrist bloc that seeks to break with polarisation and took around seven percent of the vote.

The results hand Milei a strengthened hand in Congress, close to the third it needs in both chambers to shield presidential vetoes from being overturned. However, LLLA will have to forge alliances with other forces to advance larger structural reforms.

"God bless Argentina," Milei's spokesman Manuel Adorni wrote on X.

As the initial results were released, hundreds of Milei’s supporters gathered outside the Hotel Libertador in Buenos Aires, his party’s headquarters for elections.

"I am very happy and excited. I did not expect such a large number," said Facundo Campos, a 38-year-old marketing consultant, as he cheered Milei’s performance. 

"I shouted as if it were the winning goal in Argentina's last World Cup victory," he added.

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.

Around alf of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies and one-third of the Senate seats were up for grabs on Sunday.

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.

Washington promised an unprecedented US$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.

– TIMES/AFP