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Argentine President Javier Milei speaks to the media while standing on a vehicle with lawmaker Jose Luis Espert during a La Libertad Avanza rally ahead of legislative elections on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina, on August 27, 2025.
Dual crises throw wrench in Milei’s election plans
The campaign for Argentina’s legislative election officially launched this week, but it couldn’t have gone worse for President Javier Milei. A corruption scandal – one of the very things that he railed against during his successful campaign two years ago – burst into the news after a leaked recording appeared to implicate his sister.
The tapes suggest that Karina Milei, who is also a member of the administration, was involved in a kickback scheme at the National Disability Agency (ANDIS). Nothing has been proven, but the federal authorities stepped up their investigation in response to the leaked audio.
That’s not all for Milei: alongside the corruption scandal are a host of economic issues that have undermined his policy of fiscal “shock therapy.” Output has been stagnant this year, the peso is massively overvalued – this decreases competitiveness of Argentine exports – and public sector pay is down in real terms. Argentina’s central bank also increased its reserve requirements this week, which could further hit the economy. The concern for Milei is that these issues will overwhelm the success he’s had in bringing down inflation and balancing the budget.
“It won’t be a corruption scandal that does him in, it will probably be the economic problems,” said Eugenia Mitchelstein, a social sciences professor at the University of San Andrés in Buenos Aires. “The corruption scandal doesn’t help.”
The Oct. 26 midterm election, where a third of senators and half of the Chamber of Deputies are up for election, is a vital one for the president. The vote will not only be a bellwether for how Argentina feels about his economic approach, but also gives Milei’s La Libertad Avanza (LLA) party an opportunity to pick up seats in a Congress that has blocked many of the president’s proposed reforms.
What’s the current state of Argentina’s Congress? Milei only co-founded the libertarian LLA in 2021, so its representation in both chambers of the National Congress is paltry: only six of the 72 senators and 38 of the 257 deputies currently belong to LLA. What’s more, Argentina’s politics is heavily fragmented, meaning there are several different parties represented in the Congress – no single party has a majority. The Unión por la Patria (UP), a center-left Peronist grouping that is Milei’s main foe, has a plurality.
What does Milei want? Milei’s first target is to win a third of the seats so that he can gain veto power. Beyond that, the president hopes to enact tax, labor, and pension reforms that will structurally alter Argentina’s economy. So far he has been able to muscle some changes through the National Congress, such as the big omnibus bill passed in June 2024 to deregulate the economy and hand the president more power. But his party’s threadbare representation limited what he was able to achieve, forcing him to negotiate with his opponents from a weak position. That could change after the October election.
“Even if the government does extremely well, they won’t have their own majority in Congress, so they will still need to negotiate with the more moderate sectors of the opposition,” Juan Cruz Díaz, the managing director of Buenos Aires-based advisory firm Cefeidas Group, told GZERO. “But they will do it from a different standpoint, from a different legitimacy. They will have more leverage.”
Who’s leading the charge against Milei? UP may be the biggest opposition party, but they have a leadership crisis. Over 40% of Argentinians said they didn’t know who the leader of the opposition was, or said there was none, per a Pulso poll from earlier this month. Another 25% said it was former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the left-wing Peronist leader who is currently under house arrest for corruption, and is barred from politics for life.
“[The opposition] is not only fragmented, it is leaderless,” said Marcelo J. Garcia, Americas director at Horizon Engage consultancy. “Milei is the only national leader that controls his political space, his political party. So that really plays to his advantage.”
Why should I care about Argentina? The Latin American nation of over 47 million people is better known for its soccer stars, beautiful Patagonian mountain range, and delicious beef steaks. But Milei is creating his own level of fame. His brash brand of chainsaw politics has become something exemplary for right wingers across the globe, with libertarians proclaiming his premiership as a paragon of success.
This election gives Argentinians the chance to say how they feel about Milei’s leadership, and whether he’s done enough to stabilize the country’s turbulent economy. It could have major ramifications for how Milei governs going forward, according to Mitchelstein.
“If he does well, if he gets, say, 40-42% of the vote, it will confirm his intuition, and it will probably make him more Milei than ever,” Mitchelstein told GZERO. “If he doesn't get that many votes, say, 37-38%, it might actually lead him to rethink his government, and also the way he’s been ruling.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, right, sits beside then-Senior Counselor to the President Steve Bannon, left, as President Donald Trump hosts a strategy and policy forum with chief executives of major US companies at the White House in February 2017.
Daggers out for Elon Musk
What does former senior Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon think of current Trump senior adviser Elon Musk? He’s shared plenty of public insults. “Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant,” Bannon recently told a reporter. “He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values, or traditions.” He dismissed Musk’s cost-cutting projects in government as “performative.”
This latest Bannon salvo at Musk reflects the sharpening of already rough-edged rivalries within Trump’s circle between hard-core populists (like Bannon) and hyper-libertarians (like Musk). For his part, Musk has mostly ignored Bannon’s attacks. In a recent tweet, Musk dismissed Bannon as “a great talker. Not a great doer.”
That may be in part because Musk knows Bannon and others have little real leverage to use against him. In past administrations, members of the president’s party in Congress or major party donors could use their influence with the chief executive to sideline an unpopular aide. But Musk’s money gives him a potent weapon to use against lawmakers fearful of well-funded election challengers, and no donor has ever offered a candidate more than Musk gave Trump in 2024. Former Trump Communications Chief Anthony Scaramucci predicts that though the president won’t “jettison” Musk, his influence on Trump is “not sustainable.” We’ll see.
The sniping will continue as Musk racks up both successes and failures in the coming weeks. But the only person who can undermine Musk is President Trump, who has given no indication of dissatisfaction.
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Can a far-right populist win in Argentina?
For the first time ever, someone unaffiliated with either of Argentina’s two main political blocs is making a serious run at the presidency. In fact, Javier Milei is not a traditional politician but an eccentric economist and TV provocateur who promises radical measures to rescue an economy in shambles and tame an annual inflation rate hovering over 100%. He claims to not have brushed his hair since he was 13 and is famous for antics like auctioning off his paycheck. With six months to go to the Oct. 22 election, Milei's message is resonating especially with young voters fed up with a political establishment that has long been unable to solve the country’s problems. Let's learn more about this guy from Eurasia Group analyst Luciano Sigalov.
Who is Javier Milei?
A former university professor and corporate economist, the 52-year-old Milei first captured the public’s attention as a conservative pundit on television talk shows. His unruly hair, wild eyes, and inflammatory statements – for example, calling politicians “thieves” and “criminals” – made him a charismatic figure. In 2021, Milei won a seat in congress. Now, he is running for president as the head of his Liberty Advances party.
What are Milei’s political views?
His views have a lot in common with those of far-right populists such as Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. Milei believes politics is a no-holds-barred contest between the “good guys” and the “bad guys,” the latter represented by traditional political parties from the left to the center right of the political spectrum, which he calls the “caste.” He opposes feminism and abortion as part of a crusade against “cultural Marxism” that he believes has awarded minority groups with too many rights, to the detriment of what he considers ordinary people. And he promises a return to an early-20th-century golden era when Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world thanks to its booming agricultural and beef exports.
Milei calls himself an “anarcho-capitalist” – what does that mean?
Anarcho-capitalists seek the dismantling of the state and the creation of a society regulated solely by the free interactions of individuals and their property. But given the impossibility of implementing this vision in the real world, Milei wants to reduce the state’s presence to a bare minimum. He has proposed eliminating several ministries, privatizing state-owned companies, dollarizing the economy, and shuttering the central bank.
Why is Milei so popular?
He is a gifted demagogue who has effectively tapped into a rising tide of antiestablishment sentiment. Opinion surveys show that his popularity is driven more by his vehement criticism of the political elite than by his radical policy proposals and references to economic theories most people have never heard of. Yet the simplicity of the solutions he offers to intractable problems also has appeal for many voters – especially his proposal to replace the country’s currency with the dollar as a remedy for runaway inflation.
What are his main strengths and weaknesses as a candidate?
Novelty is his biggest strength. He has not previously been in government, so he can freely criticize the two main political coalitions, blaming them for all the country’s problems. Yet his rhetoric is too radical to win over many voters, and he lacks an organization capable of conducting an effective national campaign. Nor does he have a team ready to assume office if he wins.
What do the polls say about his chances?
Polls in Argentina do not have a good track record, so they need to be taken with a pinch of salt. The latest polling is tied to the Aug. 13 primaries (everyone running for president in Argentina is required to participate in the primaries, even if they are their parties’ only candidates, as in Milei’s case). Recent surveys show that about 20% of respondents say they would vote for Milei in the primaries, second only to the share supporting Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (25%), who is not running. That said, the two potential candidates for the Together for Change opposition have a combined vote share of about 30%. The ruling Everybody’s Front has about 25%. President Alberto Fernández — no relation to his Veep — is not running for reelection.
The polling suggests that Milei has a good chance of a second-place finish in the Oct. 22 election, which could force a runoff between the top two finishers on Nov. 19. A runoff is required if the election’s winner fails to obtain at least 45% of the vote or 40% of the vote and at least a 10 percentage point lead over the second-place finisher.
What does Milei’s fame tell us about the state of Argentinian politics and the country today?
It reflects the failure of the political class to agree on basic policies to get the country moving again and end an economic crisis that has gone on for far too long. It also shows that, even though memories of the country’s 1976-83 military dictatorship remain fresh, Argentines are not immune to the appeal of far-right populism and politicians of dubious democratic credentials.
Is Milei an authoritarian?
He has made numerous comments that suggest he might not respect the rules of democracy were he to win the election. He has enthusiastically praised leaders such as Trump and Bolsonaro, who sought to undermine the rule of law in their countries, and has said he would resort to popular consultation mechanisms if congress were to reject his reform plans. When talking about Argentina’s golden era, he links its end to the election of Hipólito Yrigoyen as president in the country’s first free and fair vote in 1916. And though Milei condemns the recent military dictatorship, he disputes the official number of 30,000 people killed or kidnapped by the regime.
Edited by Jonathan House, Senior Editor, Eurasia Group.