With just over a week to go before bellwether elections in the nation’s key electoral battleground, Buenos Aires Province and a corruption scandal dominating the headlines, President Javier Milei’s poll numbers are slumping.
Tensions are rising on the campaign trail – the President was attacked with stones on Wednesday while campaigning with his candidates in Lomas de Zamora, on the southern outskirts of Buenos Aires.
His sister, Presidential Chief-of-Staff Karina Milei, was also in the vehicle, along with several other officials.
Everyone escaped unharmed, though hostilities flared again the following day. The President’s sibling and Lower House Speaker Martín Menem were forced to abandon a campaign motorcade in Corrientes Province following a series of “incidents.”
The incidents highlight some of the anger that has emerged in recent days, with Milei, 54, and some of his closest officials at the centre of a developing scandal.
On August 19, audio recordings began leaking on social media and in the press. In them, a voice attributed to Diego Spagnuolo, then head of the ANDIS national disability agency, reveals his unrest at the behaviour of top officials and details of an alleged corruption scheme that reportedly sees more than US$500,000 siphoned off in kickbacks every month.
In the audios, the supposed voice of Spagnuolo names top officials who either are aware of or are engaged in the scheme – including Karina Milei and Eduardo ‘Lule’ Menem, one of her closest allies and the cousin of Martín Menem.
The scandal has enraged many Argentines, particularly those who backed President Milei in the 2023 elections on the basis of his “anti-caste” rhetoric and vow to end corruption.
Milei administration officials deny the allegations and say the claims are an “operation” cooked up by opponents in order to damage its chance in the upcoming Buenos Aires Province election on September 7 and the national midterms on October 26.
Neither the audio recordings nor their claims have yet been verified by the courts.
Spagnuolo has yet to comment publicly.
Damage to image
Regardless, the claims seem to be damaging the government at the worst possible time.
A poll by the Management & Fit consultancy firm this week found that a staggering 94.5 percent of those surveyed in Buenos Aires Province were aware of the scandal, highlighting its reach in the nation’s main electoral battleground.
Far from downplaying the situation, the majority view the revelations as scandalous – 73.2 percent consider it to be serious or very serious.
Regarding the veracity of the accusations, 59.2 percent said they believed the audio recordings and reported acts of corruption to be true.
Highlighting a major problem for the Milei government, 26.8 percent blamed the entire national administration for the scandal, while 24.5 percent directly blamed Karina Milei, La Libertad Avanza’s key organiser.
Sounding the alarm bell ahead of upcoming national midterm elections, 56.1 percent of respondents said the scandal had changed their level of confidence in the Milei administration, though 86 percent said they would not shift their planned vote in the wake of the scandal.
Management & Fit took the snap poll on Tuesday and Wednesday, consulting 1,000 people.
Meanwhile, a study by the Horus consulting firm carried out August 19 through 24 on comments posted on Facebook and Instagram found that 86 percent of respondents think “there is corruption in the national government and point out that Karina Milei is involved.”
“The outrage over corruption is heightened because the embezzled funds should have been allocated to people with disabilities,” stressed Horus in a report.
By contrast, just 11 percent defended the ruling party and saw the case as a Kirchnerite “operation amplified by the media and biased journalists.”
String of setbacks
A string of setbacks for the Milei administration were already damaging trust in the government, even before this latest scandal.
Confidence in the government slumped 13 percent in August from the previous month, according to a tracked poll elaborated by the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. It is now at “its lowest level since the beginning of Javier Milei’s term, disrupting the relative stability observed in the previous four months,” it said in a report.
The survey was conducted between August 1 and 14, 2025, before the alleged bribery case at ANDIS broke out.
In a poll released midweek based on 1,200 respondents, the Proyección consulting firm confirmed that Milei’s approval rating had taken a considerable hit.
Only 35 percent considered the head of state credible, and just 32 percent rated him honest. Only 19 percent said they recognised “empathy with the most vulnerable sectors” of society in the President.
Despite the burgeoning scandal, however, as many of 64 percent of La Libertad Avanza voters said they would not change their vote in the upcoming elections, indicating that the damage may not be terminal.
According to a Latam Pulse survey of almost 5,000 people, conducted by Bloomberg and Atlas Intel just after the scandal broke, Milei’s disapproval rating stands at 51.1 percent. His approval rating has declined to 43.8 percent, with 5.1 percent unsure how to respond.
With regard to his government, the percentage of those rating it as “bad or very bad” has risen, reaching 46.4 percent, compared to 35.8 percent who still consider it “excellent or good.” Almost 17 percent describe it as average.
The poll also identified Argentina’s most pressing current issues as corruption (36.9 percent) and unemployment (36 percent). These were followed by high prices and inflation (28.5 percent); the overall economic situation (28.4 percent) and the weakening of democracy and institutions (28.1 percent).
According to the survey, the greatest risk facing Argentina for respondents is the emergence of revelations about large-scale fraud or corruption schemes, which 46 percent consider “very likely.”
