Argentina’s Election and 2026
Argentine President Javier Milei’s extraordinary electoral victory this week could be a good omen for American Republicans in 2026.
Argentine President Javier Milei’s extraordinary electoral victory this week could be a good omen for American Republicans in 2026.
Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, won 64 seats in the House of Deputies. His party and allied groups also won 14 seats in the nation’s Senate. Before the election, they only had 37 deputies and six senators.
If Republicans win a similar victory in 2026, it would mean something like 290 Republicans in the House (a roughly 140-vote majority) and 73 Republican Senators (a 36 vote majority).
Of course, a swing like that is impossible in America. Only one-third of the Senate is up for election in any given year, and gerrymandering has created some near disaster-proof House seats.
However, Milei’s victory has proven a reform movement can undertake deeply disruptive, painful changes and still increase its share of power.
Like President Trump, Milei is a dedicated reformer who is determined to profoundly change a system which has been crippling his country for at least eight decades.
It is easy to forget that Argentina was once one of the wealthiest countries in the world. In 1913, the average Argentinian had about 80 percent of the income of the average American. It took several generations of socialist politicians to destroy Argentina’s wealth. Today. the average Argentinian has about 30 percent of the income of the average American.
This is a lesson followers of Zohran Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders should consider. If the American big government socialists do for the United States what Juan Peron and the Argentinian socialists did for their country, every American will rapidly become poorer.
Milei brought an intellectual understanding of conservative economics, a great television personality, and a willingness to dismantle the old order. Elon Musk’s antics with the chainsaw was actually a tribute to Milei – who had won the presidency with that as his symbol. His pledge was to take a chainsaw to the bureaucracy, regulations, and political machines crippling Argentina’s economy.
And Milei implemented his campaign promises. In his first two years, he slashed spending by 30 percent, cut regulations, and shrunk the bureaucracy by 55,000 workers (a 15 percent reduction). He has also cut the number of ministries from 19 to nine, lowered taxes, and encouraged economic growth and investment in Argentina. All this led to a budget surplus for the first time in 14 years.
Milei clearly intends to build on this victory. He told an election night crowd, “Today marks the beginning of building a great Argentina. This result is nothing more and nothing less than the confirmation of the mandate we assumed in 2023.” He attributed the victory to the voters’ “determination to change the destiny of the nation irreversibly.”
Milei has an ambitious follow-on reform program. He plans to change labor laws, make contracts more flexible – and make even deeper cuts to federal spending and regulation. He plans to have more tax cuts, and to dramatically streamline bureaucratic procedures. His major goal is to increase the economy and boost salaries and jobs. To achieve this he wants to make it much easier to start new companies.
As Milei summarized it election night: “Argentines showed that they don’t want to return to the model of failure… We want to be a country that grows. We want to make Argentina great again.”
No wonder President Trump took great pleasure in Milei’s victory – and why he and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went all in to help him.
Every Republican should take heart. Faced with a choice between reform or decay, free enterprise or big government socialism, and freedom or bureaucratic rule, voters will side with what works. They did in Argentina.
