“Today has been a historic day. The Argentine people left decadence behind and opted for progress. Today we passed the turning point. Today the construction of a great Argentina begins.”

These were Javier Milei's first words since his electoral bunker after his party obtained strong support in the national midterm elections.

After months of anxiety - with a defeat in the legislative elections of the province of Buenos Aires on September 7, corruption scandals and an economic crisis for which he had to be helped by Donald Trump - the libertarian leader was able to celebrate this Sunday in Argentina.

With electoral absenteeism higher than the last two elections in 2023 and 2021, Argentines renewed half of the Chamber of Deputies (127 legislators) and a third of the Upper House (24 senators), but, above all, they gave strong support to the current president.

With almost the entire election counted, Libertad Avanza, the official party, obtained more than 40% of the votes, with resounding victories in the city of Buenos Aires and the provinces of Cordoba and Santa Fe.

But, the big surprise was how it cut the difference in the province of Buenos Aires, the country's main electoral district, where almost a month and a half ago it had lost by almost 14 points to Peronism and in this election it beat it by less than a point.

"Tonight we saw very close results with a minimum of 0.5 against us. We were able to renew 15 deputies and one more," said the Peronist governor of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof.

Peronism, united under the banner of Fuerza Patria, placed second nationally with a percentage of 31.62%.

The third force, with 7.13% of the votes, was the United Provinces alliance, a force of six governors that tried to occupy the center of the political stage, between the libertarians and the Peronists. Only one of the six governors won in their province.

Fourth place went to the Left Front, with almost 4%.

All of this within the framework of a consolidation of the trend already seen in the regional elections held this year: a lack of interest in voting among a large part of the Argentine population.

The National Electoral Chamber reported that this Sunday, in a country where voting is mandatory, almost 68% of the electoral roll voted.

According to the local newspaper El Clarin, "it is the highest absenteeism" in an electoral process since the return of Argentine democracy.

First consequences of the victory

With these results, the ruling party will increase its presence in Congress, where in its first two years it depended on the votes of its allies to approve its projects, although the Senate will remain under the control of the opposition.

"We have to strengthen the reformist path in the next two years to consolidate growth and a definitive takeoff,” the president said during the celebrations.

Furthermore, the election leaves Governor Kicillof in a bad state of shock. After his party’s success in the Buenos Aires regional election, he had positioned himself as the president’s main obstacle in his quest for reelection in 2027.

Kicillof appeared at his political group’s headquarters alongside several current figures, including Sergio Massa, former presidential candidate and leader of the Renovador Front; Maximo Kirchner, son of former presidents Cristina Fernandez and Nestor Kirchner, and president of the Justicialist Party of the Province of Buenos Aires; and Juan Grabois, a leader of the Union of Workers of the Popular Economy.

With this staging, the governor called for unity with his Peronist partners and even said that “the future is not Milei, it belongs to the people.”

In that same Fuerza Patria bunker, Grabois took aim at La Libertad Avanza and maintained that its campaign manager “is called Donald Trump, and his Minister of Economy, Scott Bessent, is the US Secretary of the Treasury.”

For his part, Trump, on his social network Truth Social, described the ruling party’s victory as “crushing.”

“He’s doing a wonderful job! Our confidence in him has been justified by the people of Argentina,” he commented.

Internationally, Milei will also be able to show her American counterpart and the International Monetary Fund that she has the majority support of the Argentine people to promote the pending measures of her economic program: the pension, tax, and labor.

In recent weeks, Trump ordered a unique financial aid from the US to Argentina to alleviate the growing political and economic problems of Milei, with whom he feels ideological affinity.

The economic crisis, corruption cases, and Trump's lifeline

Since coming to power in December 2023, Javier Milei has promoted a series of measures to curb inflation, reduce the fiscal deficit, and stabilize the exchange rate.

However, over time, the government began to run out of dollars and the economic outlook darkened. In September, investors began to divest their assets and began to doubt the country's ability to meet its debt commitments.

The Executive Branch was also rocked by several corruption scandals. The first erupted when Milei was linked to the promotion of the $Libra cryptocurrency, which is being investigated by the courts as an alleged scam.

Then audio recordings were leaked from a former director of the Disability Agency suggesting bribes to Karina Milei, the president's sister and secretary general of the Presidency, and the resignation of the ruling party candidate for deputy in Buenos Aires, Jose Luis Espert, accused of having ties to a businessman related to drug trafficking in the US.

The population then began to show suspicion of the president's policies.

According to the Torcuato di Tella University, the Government Confidence Index fell to its lowest point in the first half of August: from 2.45 to 2.12 points in one month, a decrease of 13.6%.

According to analysts, these factors partly explain the defeat of Milei's political party in the elections provincials.

In this context, US economic support was decisive for Sunday's victory.

The aid plan announced by Washington included a $20 billion swap line between the two countries and the purchase of $1 billion in Argentine pesos, in order to contain the devaluation.

The measure generated criticism of Trump within the US, especially among businessmen in the agricultural sector who compete with Argentina and considered that the policy contradicted his motto of "America First."

The financial lifeline managed to calm the markets, although it was conditioned - as Trump himself warned - on a victory for Milei's bloc.

"If she loses, we are not going to be so generous with Argentina," declared the US president.

In the end, Milei recovered.

This Sunday, after the results were announced, Argentine stocks registered a sharp rise in the overnight market New York.

Support for Milei's program

Various analysts point out that the government received support for its program on Sunday.

“People decided to keep credit open to the change in focus of the economy, which is basically what Milei proposes,”says Orlando D'Adamo, a psychologist specializing in political behavior, to BBC Mundo.

In his opinion, “the opposition made a mistake” because a good number of the candidates it presented for these legislative elections were old acquaintances in politics.

And that allowed Milei's party, despite being in government, to successfully play the anti-system card again, even with little-known candidates for deputy or senator.

The opposition also did not offer any clear proposals for these elections, perhaps a reflection of the confidence that the government's exhaustion was enough to win.

“The idea of ????'I don't know what comes next and I'm having a bad time today, but I know that I don't want to forget the past' took hold quite strongly ‘come back,'” Goyburu explains in conversation with BBC Mundo.

This, he adds, is happening alongside a sociological change in the Argentine electoral register: today half of voters are under 39 years old, the segment that evaluates the government most positively and that “grew up watching their adults constantly complain about Argentine politics.”