The party of Argentina’s far-right president, Javier Milei, has won Sunday’s midterm elections after a campaign in which Donald Trump announced a $40bn bailout for the country and made continued aid conditional on the victory of his Argentinian counterpart.

With more than 99% of ballots counted, La Libertad Avanza secured 40.8% of the nationwide vote, in an election widely seen as a de facto referendum on the self-styled anarcho-capitalist’s nearly two years in power. The Peronist opposition, Fuerza Patria, secured 31.7%.

With the result, the Peronists remain the largest bloc by just three seats. But when Milei’s party is combined with the centre-right PRO party of former president Mauricio Macri – which has voted with the government over the past two years – the president now has a larger bloc than the opposition to push through his libertarian reforms.

Milei’s victory has surprised Argentine analysts and many say that even the government itself did not expect such an overwhelming result, given the recent blows to the libertarian’s popularity from corruption allegations involving his sister and the current economic crisis.

The government had downplayed expectations, considering anything between 30% and 35% a satisfactory outcome, especially after Milei’s heavy defeat in the provincial elections in Buenos Aires in September, when he lost to the Peronists by 14 percentage points.

Supporters of the Peronist coalition Fuerza Patria after the election results were announced. Photograph: Martin Cossarini/Reuters

This time, Milei’s party turned the tide, winning in Argentina’s largest electoral district, home to about 40% of the electorate.

“I am the king of a lost world,” Milei sang as he took the stage in front of hundreds of supporters at a hotel in Buenos Aires. He began his speech by saying: “Today we passed the tipping point – the construction of a great Argentina begins.”

The president hailed the US bailout as “something unprecedented, not only in Argentine history but in world history, because the US has never offered support of such magnitude”.

“Now we are focused on carrying out the reforms that Argentina needs to consolidate growth and the definitive takeoff of the country – to make Argentina great again,” the president said in Spanish, echoing the Trumpist slogan.

A woman holds a sign critical of the Trump-Milei relationship. Photograph: Emiliano Lasalvia/AFP/Getty Images

Trump soon offered his congratulations on Sunday night, calling the win for Milei’s party a “landslide victory”.

Speaking on a trip to Asia on Monday, Trump said Milei had a “lot of help” from the US, as he praised the unexpectedly “big win”, describing it as “a great thing”.

“He had a lot of help from us. He had a lot of help. I gave him an endorsement, a very strong endorsement,” Trump said, also crediting some of his top officials, including the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, who oversaw the financial assistance to Argentina. “We are sticking with a lot of the countries in South America. We focus very much on South America,” Trump said.

For the political scientist Miguel de Luca, Trump’s support “was decisive” in preventing the country’s economy from deteriorating further in recent weeks. “But I don’t think it influenced voters’ decisions,” he said.

Markets reacted sharply to the surprise victory, with shares rising more than 40% in pre-market trading and the Merval index posting its biggest one-day jump in 30 years, up almost 32%. Dollar-denominated sovereign bonds climbed as much as 23%. The result is being seen as a renewed wave of optimism that Milei’s austerity plan and the US bailout could succeed.

Cardboard cutouts depicting Milei and Trump in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Photograph: Matías Baglietto/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

Up for grabs in the election were 127 of the 257 seats in the lower house and a third of the senate, 24 of its 72 seats. Milei’s party secured 64 lower house seats and 12 in the senate.

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The new seats in the lower house, combined with those already held, allow the government to meet its main goal for this election: securing at least a third of the lower house to sustain presidential vetoes.

Milei performed better in Sunday’s elections than he did in the first round of the 2023 vote, when he came second before winning in the runoff – midterms in Argentina are typically setbacks for sitting presidents, and he is only the third to have achieved a better result than when first elected.

Even with a working majority when his party is combined with the centre-right PRO, Milei still needs about 20 more deputies to pass laws and reforms – meaning he will have to negotiate with governors outside his coalition, who wield significant influence over members of Congress.

“Milei comes out stronger from the election and wins a second chance,” said De Luca. “It remains to be seen whether he takes advantage of it by opening negotiations with moderate governors or continues with his ‘governing alone’ style, without allies.”

Milei began his administration almost two years ago with his “chainsaw” spending cuts, slashing tens of thousands of public jobs and freezing investment in infrastructure, healthcare, education and even the supply of medicines for pensioners.

He managed to bring down inflation from more than 200% in 2023 to about 30% in September, achieving the country’s first fiscal surplus in 14 years. Economic activity grew by 0.3% in August 2025 after three consecutive months of decline.

But purchasing power has plummeted: most Argentinians say they are struggling to make ends meet, more than 250,000 jobs have been lost and about 18,000 businesses have closed.

The libertarian’s popularity also took a hit when Milei promoted a cryptocurrency that later collapsed; his sister and most powerful cabinet member, Karina Milei, was implicated in an alleged corruption scheme; and one of his party’s leading candidates withdrew from Sunday’s election after admitting to having received $200,000 from a businessman accused of drug trafficking in the US.

Karina Milei waves to supporters. Photograph: Luis Robayo/AFP/Getty Images

To prevent the peso from devaluing, the government burned through its dollar reserves, even after taking a $20bn loan (of which $14bn has been disbursed) from the International Monetary Fund, and was forced to turn to Trump, who came to the rescue with a $40bn bailout.

Trump’s stance was seen by many in the country as interference in the election, and some predicted that – owing to anti-American sentiment among parts of the population – US support could backfire on Milei.

Although voting is compulsory, turnout was the lowest since the return to democracy in 1983, at 67.85%, surpassing the previous record low of 71% set in 2021.