“I found out I had to vote the day before,” said 32-year-old Francisco Jiménez. A resident of the working-class Buenos Aires neighborhood of Villa Soldati, Jiménez was a founding member of Rappi Milei, a group of food delivery workers who slipped libertarian flyers into the orders they delivered during Milei’s 2023 campaign. Back then, Milei’s promises of economic deregulation inspired enthusiasm among gig workers. Jiménez even attended the “funeral” of the Central Bank that Milei’s followers held after his election victory. 

Today, with the economy paralyzed and corruption scandals multiplying, that euphoria seems to have waned, but the votes have not.

“I can’t make ends meet, even though I work a lot. I do deliveries for apps, but prices keep going up. Things aren’t great right now, but Milei hasn’t been in power that long — we have to wait a bit more,” said Jiménez, who voted for Milei’s La Libertad Avanza (LLA) candidates in Sunday’s national legislative elections. “They’re the only good thing left. The rest is more of the same, and they’ve done too much damage already.”

Like Jiménez, many Argentines went to the polls with their finances in tatters, but 41% of them still chose to back the libertarians. Juan Courel, head of the consultancy Alaska Discurso y Estrategia, admitted the scale of the result surprised him, especially because it came “at the president’s lowest approval point since taking office.”

“Cornered by the rise of the dollar, unable to contain it before the vote; hit by corruption scandals, with a candidate in Buenos Aires Province accused of drug trafficking, and without control of the agenda, [Milei] still got this result,” Courel told the Herald. (Libertarian deputy José Luis Espert, who was slated to be........

© Buenos Aires Herald