Editors at National Review Online analyze an election they dub “Milei’s triumph.”
The impressive showing by Javier Milei’s LLA in Argentina’s midterm elections is a refreshing reminder that the country’s eccentric “anarcho-capitalist” president has not lost his ability to surprise. The LLA won just under 41 percent of the vote, some six percentage points above (diminished) expectations and far ahead of Milei’s principal opposition, the Peronist Fuerza Patria, which only scored 23-24 percent. Milei will have a substantial base of support in the legislature. something he has lacked up until now — and in the nick of time.
Much of what Milei has achieved has been through the exercise of emergency powers. These have now expired and, depending on whether recent legislation survives, could be difficult to repeat on the same scale. This will now matter less as Milei will have enough support in congress to buttress his veto power, although passing legislation will depend on partnerships with other center-right parties — not Milei’s greatest strength.
Milei has promised that his reforms will continue, as they should, and the voters have given him valuable backing to persevere with a task that will take time and will frequently hurt. Repairing the damage inflicted by decades of misgovernment is hard. Nevertheless, in his first two years in office, Milei has headed off hyperinflation (monthly inflation was accelerating past 12 percent as he took office and has now fallen to around 2 percent) and restored fiscal discipline to a country infamous for having none. In 2024, Argentina recorded its first budget surplus in a decade. The price was a surge in the poverty rate, but that has now ebbed to 32 percent, lower than the 42 percent at which it stood when Milei took office but still a very high number, as is 2 percent monthly inflation. He will need better figures to keep alive hopes that his medicine, which has also included sweeping deregulation, will lead to a cure.
