Original article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Despite the president taking a front-line role in the election campaign and predicting victory for his party (“Buenos Aires will be painted purple,” Milei claimed), the figures speak for themselves. Voter turnout is estimated at almost 61%.

On September 7, 2025, the province of Buenos Aires dealt a crushing defeat to the right-wing libertarian project of President Javier Milei, who, after learning the results of the provincial elections, said: “Today we have suffered a clear defeat and we must accept it.”

The people of Buenos Aires province, which accounts for 38% of the country’s population, elected senators, deputies, and delegates of their municipalities. Peronism decided to join forces and form a large anti-Milei alliance called Fuerza Patria (Homeland Force), which, according to official data, obtained almost 47% of the valid votes. Meanwhile, La Libertad Avanza, Milei’s party that allied itself with the PRO (the party of former president Mauricio Macri), reached almost 34%. In third and fourth place were the centrist SOMOS and the Left Front, respectively, which each obtained almost 5%. The rest of the votes were divided among the other contenders.

In other words, Peronism won by more than 13 points over the far right, allowing it to take six of the eight electoral districts. La Libertad Avanza only managed to win the fifth and sixth districts. In addition, Peronism swept the municipal elections, winning 95 of the 135 municipalities in the province.

Milei says he will not back down

Despite the resounding defeat, Milei stated that while the necessary political mistakes must be corrected, he will not back down from his neoliberal project. “We will not back down one millimeter in the government’s policy; we will accelerate the course even more. If we have made political mistakes, we will process them and do better to win in October… We will continue to defend fiscal balance.”

He also took the opportunity to criticize his primary opposition, “They have put all the Peronist apparatus that they have been managing for 40 years into play, and this [result] is the floor for us and the ceiling for them.”

Peronism celebrates

For its part, the main opposition force, Peronism, celebrated the results. Former President Cristina Fernández, who is currently under house arrest, wrote on her X account: “Did you see that, Milei? Trivializing and vandalizing the ‘Never Again’ movement, which represents the darkest and most tragic period in Argentine history, does not come without a price. Neither is laughing at the death and pain of your opponents. But pointing fingers and stigmatizing the disabled, while your sister charges a 3% kickback on their medications, is lethal. And I’d better not even tell you how the rest (of those who still have jobs) are doing. Indebted for food, rent, expenses, or medications, and on top of that, with maxed-out credit cards. Get out of your bubble, brother.”

Read more: “We will return,” former Argentine president Cristina Fernández tells supporters

The Peronist governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, said to his supporters after learning the results: “The message from the polls is that you can’t govern for outsiders, for those who have the most. Milei: You have to govern for the people.” Furthermore, looking ahead to future elections, including the presidential election, Kicillof stated: “The elections have shown that there is another way, and today we are beginning to follow it.”

What is the reason for the crisis of ultraliberalism?

There are several elements which can help explain the defeat of Milei and his party on Sunday.

One of them is the recent speculation and suspicion about the alleged involvement of the president’s sister, Karina Milei, in a corruption scheme involving the purchase of medicine. Many believe this directly affected Milei’s decline in popularity, which in turn affected his candidates in the province of Buenos Aires.

Other interpretations also point to an increasingly difficult management of the economy. The government has implemented a radical neoliberal policy that is in line with the demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This has brought some stability to inflation, but it has also caused enormous social unrest, such as that of retirees who have taken to the streets every week to protest against government cuts to health care and freeze pensions.

Read more: Argentine pensioners face heavy repression in weekly march

In this regard, journalist Federico Rivas Molina wrote in El País: “The economic team is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the value of the peso against the dollar. To prevent the dollarization of peso portfolios, it first raised rates to 80%, triple the inflation forecast for this year. Then it raised bank reserve requirements to 50% to reduce the amount of pesos in circulation. In the middle of last week, the floating bands it had agreed with the International Monetary Fund and sold dollars from the Treasury. Milei then blamed the turbulence on what he called ‘the kuka risk,’ that is, the fear of a Kirchnerist victory that had investors terrified. With the prophecy fulfilled, the scenario is now much more hostile than it was on Friday.”

Along these lines, Erika Gimenez, a journalist at ARG Medios, told Peoples Dispatch that Milei’s economic plan is not working and the people know it. She explained, “No one feels that their economic situation has improved under Milei’s government; quite the contrary: inflation is rising, salaries are insufficient, pensions for retirees and disabled people are being cut, among other cruel policies implemented by Milei. He is not convincing a sector that previously voted for him.”

She also expressed her opinion that Peronism, which has several internal tendencies (not always compatible), could sustain this alliance in the medium term thanks to the emergence of a figure who can bring together the different internal forces: “I think that Axel Kicillof’s leadership [in Peronism] is indisputable.”

Regarding the immediate future of Milei’s government, Gimenez said that a process of internal crisis is coming: “The figure of his sister is weighing on Milei, and despite this, he is not going to remove her. In addition, some ministers are going to resign or be fired, although it is not known which ones. There is a kind of political instability and instability in the Milei government’s economic project. It is most likely that between now and October, when there will be national legislative elections in which everyone in the country votes, political and economic stability will be at stake.”

Original article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.