Martina Jaureguy Updated at 9:35 p.m.
La Libertad Avanza (LLA) has won the Buenos Aires legislative elections, taking 30.1% of the vote on Sunday’s ballot across the capital with Presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni as head of the party’s ticket with 98% of the vote counted.
The voter turnout was the lowest in the history of the Argentine capital, with just 53.2% of the 2.5 million eligible voters casting their ballots. A low voter turnout was expected due to the fact that the local election was split from the October 26 national election — something unusual for Buenos Aires City — but the figure was much lower than political analysts had estimated.
This was a highly fragmented election with 17 different tickets on offer, which a number experts described as an “unprecedented” amount of options.
LLA secured the win after campaigning to conduct the government’s “chainsaw” measures in the city itself, similar to what President Javier Milei has done at a national level with lowering taxes and shrinking the state presence.
Peronist ticket Es Ahora Buenos Aires, led by Leandro Santoro, finished second with 27.3% of the vote. In 2023, Santoro had similar results (32%) when he finished as runner-up in the mayoral election that PRO’s Jorge Macri ultimately won.
PRO, with Silvia Lospennato as head of the ticket, was third with 15.9%, the worst result for the “yellow” party in almost 20 years of dominance in the Argentine capital. This is the first time PRO has fallen behind Peronism in Buenos Aires City since the party’s creation.
Former Buenos Aires mayor and ex-PRO member Horacio Rodríguez Larreta’s ticket came in fourth place with 8% of the vote. Center party Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), which competed under the Evolución ticket led by Lucille Levy, produced one of their worst elections in their storied history with just 2.3% of the vote. They fell to eighth place behind left-wing Frente de Izquierda, former LLA member Ramiro Marra’s ticket, and Coalición Cívica.
Citizens and foreign residents of Buenos Aires City voted to renew half of the 60 seats at the local legislature. This means that, while LLA was the most voted party, each contending coalition will get a certain number of seats according to the proportion of the vote they received — the ones with too few votes won’t get any.
First reactions to the vote
The result is another key win for the government and LLA’s relatively short history as a political force in Argentina. PRO has dominated elections in Buenos Aires City for the past two decades. While PRO and LLA have been allies throughout President Javier Milei’s first year in government, their relationship has become increasingly strained. For this election, they decided to compete against each other instead of forming a coalition. With LLA still a relatively new political party having only formed in 2021 it marks another defiant win for the far-right.
“If LLA does better than PRO, it will be PRO’s coup de grâce,” Dr. Ariadna Gallo, a political science researcher at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council CONICET, had told the Herald ahead of the election.
“If PRO can’t even consolidate the center-right and right-wing vote in their hometown and main electoral bastion, it will be their breaking point,” she had said, adding it would put PRO in a position of little scope to negotiate with the government. “It will make many of the ones who are on their way of leaving PRO to finally decide to join LLA.”
“A great moment, a great future,” Adorni posted on X along with a photo of himself with his wife Bettina Angeletti, Milei, Presidency Secretary Karina Milei, and presidential advisor Santiago Caputo. “God bless the Argentine Republic.”
“People made a decision: the instrument for change is LLA,” Adorni said in a speech at the LLA headquarters, flanked by Milei and major members of the national government.
LLA’s account on X celebrated the results with a passage from Maccabees, a staple in Milei’s following base. “Victory in battle does not depend on who has the largest army; it is from the forces that come from heaven.”
On Wednesday, Adorni’s campaign closing event in a park in the Recoleta neighborhood ended in a ruckus when a group of people claimed they had been promised money to attend, but that the organizers were refusing to pay them. LLA has vehemently denied the accusations.
In a speech at his party’s headquarters, Santoro said that with PRO achieving third place “a cycle of abandonment has been closed” in Argentina’s capital. “Evidently, PRO as a political project no longer represents most porteños. There is a new reality,” he said. “It seems like anything is allowed, but if that’s the case, we will go on in our conviction to fight for the defense of democracy and against violating the rules of the game.”
Before the official results were made public, Lospennato announced at PRO’s headquarters that the results were not what they expected. “They tried to break me in every possible way, but they didn’t succeed.”