milei

 

Milei on Track to Lose Buenos Aires Province by Landslide

By Manuela Tobias and Patrick Gillespie

September 8, 2025 at 2:21 AM GMT+2

In a harsh setback for Argentina’s President Javier Milei, his libertarian party lost a key vote in the province of Buenos Aires by a wide margin.

The left-leaning Peronist opposition came in first in the provincial vote on Sunday, winning about 47% of the ballots compared with 34% for Milei’s La Libertad Avanza party, with 83% of votes tabulated by the electoral authority.

The election in Buenos Aires province, the country’s largest and for decades a Peronist bastion, is seen as a bellwether for national midterms next month where Milei aims to boost his party’s current minority status in Congress to further curb inflation and shrink government.

Voters arrive to cast ballots at a polling station during the provincial election in La Plata, Buenos Aires province.Photographer: Anita Pouchard Serra/Bloomberg

The late October midterm vote will see voters renew nearly half of Congress.

Home to over a third of Argentina’s population, Buenos Aires province has historically swung left to support the Peronist party, including Milei’s leftist nemesis Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who was elected to the Senate there two decades ago.