Argentina’s slums abandoned Peronism—and handed Milei the win

For decades, the poor suburbs that ring Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires powered the leftist Peronist movement. On Sunday, they made a historic shift against Peronism that propelled President Javier Milei to a surprise victory in midterm congressional elections.

- Santiago Pérez, Silvina Frydlewsky & Samantha Pearson

Javier Milei's radical economic changes are now more likely to get a strong U.S. backstop.

(AFP)

The Argentine poor whom Eva Peron lionized as the country’s heart and soul largely stayed home in a stinging rebuke to the Peronist movement that has dominated politics here for 80 years. At the same time, middle-class voters mobilized to rescue Milei and his free-market revolt.

With the promise of a $40 billion bailout from President Trump behind him, Milei gave voters a choice: stick with his brand of self-described “shock therapy” for Argentina’s ills or face the familiar economic ruin seen under the Peronists in the past.

“Trump was important in consolidating the anti-Peronist vote,” said Joaquin de la Torre, who represents a conservative neighborhood organization in the provincial legislature. “The future of the economy emerged as the main issue.”

Milei, a wild-haired libertarian economist who won a shocking victory in 2023, beat out the Peronists in their stronghold of Buenos Aires province, winning by less than 1 percentage point. Nationwide results gave Milei 41% to their 32%. He got an unexpectedly strong mandate to overhaul an ailing economy with the financial firepower of the Trump administration.

Milei’s radical economic changes are now more likely to get a strong U.S. backstop. The Trump administration offered Argentina a $20 billion currency swap this month to prop up Argentina’s battered currency and promised to raise another $20 billion from private banks and sovereign-wealth funds, conditioning the $40 billion bailout on Milei’s success in the pivotal midterm elections.

Milei’s Freedom Advances party played on voters’ fears of a potential return of the Peronist movement, warning Argentines that a vote for the left was a vote for higher inflation, a tanking peso and even more financial turbulence.