Formosa elections: Gildo Insfrán's Peronist party won a landslide and will have a majority to reform the provincial constitution.

Gildo Insfrán more than achieved his goal, securing a majority of the 30 constituent assembly members who will begin meeting within the next 10 days to reform the provincial Constitution. The Justicialist Party swept the board. At press time, it garnered over 67% of the vote, while the Formoseño Broad Front—which brings together the UCR, the MID, and the PRO, and nominated Senator Francisco Paoltroni— came second with 21.3% of the vote, displacing La Libertad Avanza, which barely scraped by 10.3% of the vote, in third place.

The result strengthens the governor's position after the Supreme Court declared the unconstitutionality of the indefinite reelection that has kept the provincial leader in power since 1995 in December.

Insfrán obtained numbers close to those he achieved in 2023 , when he was reelected with 73 percent of the votes, but the provincial leader with the most consecutive terms in all of Latin America - 8 or 10 if his two terms as vice-governor are counted - won resoundingly and managed to impose himself in the 8 departments and 37 municipalities of the province .

The worst result was in the provincial capital, where he secured more than 56 percent of the vote. He won in the east—where the activity, population, and state presence are concentrated—and in the west, where indigenous communities live and where pockets of poverty are concentrated.

Neither the cold nor the previous night's storm, which turned into mud where the asphalt of management couldn't reach, discouraged the electorate. Turnout was the highest of the eight provincial elections so far this year: above 70 percent . The state apparatus functioned like clockwork.

The streets of the capital were deserted as the opposition candidates waited in their respective bunkers for the results. It was all desolation. The apathy that had been felt in the streets in the days leading up to the election, despite the posters that saturated the streets of Formosa , was repeated with the confirmation of the result. There were no celebrations or militancy in the streets. Not even honking horns; it was just another Sunday. The governor also didn't speak after the victory, but he did receive a call from Cristina Kirchner, who made it public on X.

The divided opposition fell far short of the 14 delegates Paoltroni had hoped for, and in recent days he has once again brought Javier Milei's image to the forefront of his party headquarters, despite having broken ties with the President a year and a half ago.

Insfrán expanded his absolute majority in the provincial Chamber of Deputies—with 21 of the 30 legislators— and the blue ballots distributed across 56 sub-lemmas pushed the PJ party from the bottom up in all municipalities.

The ruling party emphasized that the call to reform the Constitution had been made prior to the Court's ruling and that its main objective was to include fourth-generation rights. They assumed that term limits would be imposed from now on.

After voting in Clorinda, the province's second largest city—where the ruling party won a landslide —Senator José Mayans told Clarín that the possibility of Insfrán running for another term had not been analyzed, if the statute of limitations is interpreted as starting once the new Constitution is passed. This view would be accepted in some quarters of the Supreme Court.

Some of the most prominent opposition figures, such as Gabriela Neme and the mayor of Las Lomitas, the newly elected Libertarian and LLA constituent, Atilio Basualdo —who faced 19 PJ sub-lemmas in his district— are loudly calling for the government to push for a federal intervention , a measure that requires authorization from Congress.

"The Buenos Aires channels think I'm going to stay until I'm 200 , so don't worry (...) In Formosa, the people from Formosa decide, those from outside are just wooden ," the governor said in statements to the press after voting in his hometown, Laguna Blanca.

The Libertarians, divided into three sub-parties, obtained less than 10 percent of the vote. Among the upper echelons of the ballot, the party leader Esteban López Tozzi, appointed by Karina Milei, prevailed, defeating Héctor Brizuela, a PAMI official. The violet party paid a heavy price for going it alone, with an undisguised provincial internal struggle, also involving congressman Gerardo González, who has a close history with Insfrán.

Senator Paoltroni, who broke with the LLA, displaced Christian Evans and Neme, who campaigned with libertarian slogans, chainsaw in hand. The fourth competing slogan, "Libres del Sur," garnered less than a point. Insfrán, in the afternoon, promised to deepen " the Formosan model ," his leitmotif.