With the votes of just half the electorate, Javier Milei won the City and the internal election with Mauricio Macri.

In the Buenos Aires City elections for deputies marked by a worrying collapse in citizen participation , the candidate of Javier Milei's administration, Manuel Adorni , emerged victorious this Sunday with just over 30% of the vote. The ruling party in Argentina achieved two main objectives: it displaced the PJ-Kirchnerist candidate, Leandro Santoro, to second place, with a lead of more than 2 points; and it relegated the PRO (Progressive Party), which had Silvia Lospennato as its lead candidate, to a distant third place with just 15 points. Milei's strategy is to swallow up the party founded by Mauricio Macri, and Sunday's result marks a significant milestone in that direction.

These elections were up for renewal in 30 of the 60 seats in the Buenos Aires Legislature. But the issue has long since taken on another dimension, one of national scope . This is because the city is a showcase for the country; but above all, because of the challenge from the Casa Rosada to the cousins ​​Mauricio and Jorge Macri , who sought to seize its historic stronghold, which led the mayor—among other reasons—to decide to separate the elections from the national elections.

The PRO's debacle—it failed to win in any of the 15 Buenos Aires municipalities—leaves it in a weak position to negotiate with the Libertarians both an agreement in the province of Buenos Aires (local elections are on September 7) and in the national legislative elections in October. Paradoxically, Macri's PRO has been Milei's main supporter of governability, acting as an essential ally on issues such as the Bases law, the vote against the pension compensation program and university funding, and blocking the parliamentary investigation into the LIBRA scandal.

This Sunday's elections saw a dramatic collapse in turnout, with barely 53%. This apathy and lack of interest among the people in voting should be a wake-up call for politics and democracy. This is not an isolated case: the electoral calendar began this year in Santa Fe, and on May 11 in four provinces, also with a notable drop in turnout.

With its 30 points, La Libertad Avanza showed a "violet" growth in the City, if we take the data from its brief history . It began in 2021 with Milei-Victoria Villarruel entering the Chamber of Deputies with 17%, and then 20% for the economist in the 2023 presidential elections, which left him third in the district (he would win the runoff against Sergio Massa with 57%). Milei spoke at the bunker tonight and made no secret of the fact that she is going to devour the PRO: "Today is a pivotal day; the yellow bastion has been painted purple," she said with some exaggeration, urging "the entire country to be painted purple." Strictly speaking, half of the City was painted green, the color of Leandro Santoro's list.

But Santoro, with a de-Kirchnerized campaign, while he had an election on par with the percentages of the Buenos Aires PJ (Party of the People's Party) of recent times, also failed to rise to prominence, capitalizing on the dispersion of what was Together for Change and the bad yellow moment.

Former Buenos Aires mayor and presidential candidate Horacio Rodríguez Larreta achieved his goal of "coming back," with a modest 8% that nevertheless takes him to the Legislature (his list won three seats), from where he hopes to enter the fray in 2027. It seems clear that in the dispute over who leads the right in Argentina, the rising Mileismo "ate" the declining PRO : not even Lospennato's and Larreta's votes combined would have been enough to beat Adorni, nor would they have been enough to displace Santoro from second place.

At the bottom, only the Left Front, headed by Vanina Biasi , managed to surpass 3 percent (though not always, given that the Left has had better results in recent years). She would be the only legislator to enter through her party.

Ramiro Marra's run for the Libertarian Blues was a landslide , failing to reach 3% and thus failing to make it to the polls. Adorni's official list thus averted the threat of a voter flight, which never happened.

In the explosion of what was once Together for Change, Paula Oliveto of the Civic Coalition and the radical Lula Levy of Evolution also ran, failing to reach the 3%. They were thus excluded from the Legislature. Also included were Peronist Alejandro Kim and former soccer coach Caruso Lombardi. Seven other candidates failed to even reach the 1% threshold.