The Buenos Aires provincial election is a test of Milei’s popularity ahead of upcoming congressional polls next month.

The party of Argentina’s libertarian president, Javier Milei, has suffered a crushing defeat in local elections in the capital, Buenos Aires, even before he completes two years in office, in the most significant act of frustration with his deep-cutting economic austerity policies.

The results, announced on Sunday, put the candidate for Milei’s recently formed La Libertad Avanza (LLA) party, or Liberty Advances, Diego Valenzuela, who captured 34 percent, far behind Gabriel Katopodis, the Peronist left-wing challenger who received 47.4 percent.

LLA won just two of the eight electoral districts of the Buenos Aires province.

Milei conceded that his right-wing party’s crushing 13-point loss to his rivals represented “a clear defeat”.

“We suffered a setback, and we must accept it responsibly,” he said after the results came in. “If we’ve made political mistakes, we’re going to internalise them, we’re going to process them, we’re going to modify our actions,” he added.

In a post on X, Argentina’s former Peronist president, Cristina Kirchner, said, “Did you see Milei? … Get out of your bubble, brother … things are getting heavy.”

However, the 54-year-old economist pledged not to retreat “1 millimetre” from his agenda to aggressively roll back the Argentinian state and cut public spending. “We will deepen and accelerate it,” he said.

The election for the leadership of Argentina’s wealthiest province is viewed as a litmus test for Milei’s so-called “chainsaw” measures, as 40 percent of the country’s population lives in Buenos Aires, and it accounts for a third of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Argentina will go to the polls at the end of October for congressional midterms, which will be a crucial test of deep political support, with half of the seats in Argentina’s lower house up for grabs and a third of its senate.

Congress is already dominated by opposition parties, and the defeat in Buenos Aires will represent a blow to Milei’s hopes of expanding his influence.

Unemployment figures in Argentina are currently at their highest since 2021, during the COVID pandemic, and Milei’s government has also been caught in a corruption scandal linked to his sister and close aides.

Argentina also saw widespread protests after Milei vetoed a bill aimed at increasing pensions and disability spending. Congress later overturned his veto.

The governor of the southern Chubut province, Nacho Torres, said the vote was a “wake-up call from the citizenry”, while the governor of the northeastern Santa Fe province said voters were giving a “clear warning” to Milei. “People no longer want more shouting; they want facts. We Argentines want to grow and develop with security and in peace,” he added.