Election preview: Portugal

Portugal goes to the polls on Sunday [link added] to elect a new government, following the resignation last November of prime minister António Costa over a corruption scandal. Costa’s Socialist Party has been in power for three terms but less than eight and a half years; this is the second time it has been forced to an election mid-term.

Last time, in January 2022, after their far-left allies had voted with the centre-right opposition, the Socialists won a majority in their own right, taking 42.5% of the vote and 120 of the 230 seats.* The centre-right, consisting mostly of the oddly-named Social Democrats, had 31.6% and 77 seats. Best of the others was the far-right Chega with 7.3% and 12 seats; the two far-left parties that had forced the election declined sharply to 9.0% and 11 seats between them.

But after Costa’s resignation, new Socialist leader Pedro Nuno Santos will have his work cut out. His party was already running neck-and-neck in the opinion polls with the Social Democrats for most of last year; now it is trailing by around four points, back in the high 20s. (Note, though, that the polls badly understated the Socialist vote last time.) The big gains have gone not to the centre-right but to Chega, which is polling in the mid- to high teens.

The Social Democrats – who also have a new leader, Luís Montenegro – would very much prefer not to have to rely on Chega for a majority. Voting is proportional only within multi-member constituencies, some of them quite small, so it’s possible to win a majority with well under half the vote; the Social Democrats aren’t going to get there on their own, but it’s just possible that with the momentum in their favor they could get close to a majority with the aid of Liberal Initiative (right-liberal), which placed fourth last time with 5.1% and eight seats.

More likely is that the centre-right will be in the lead but without a majority, in which case the indications from the Socialists are that they will allow them to govern in a minority. Since there’s no prospect of the far left having enough seats to make the difference (as they did in 2015), or of the Socialists and the far right dealing with each other, a minority Social Democrat government is probably the best the Socialists can hope for.

Portugal is the only member of the European Union scheduled to vote prior to the elections for the European parliament in three months time (leaving aside non-executive presidents in Slovakia and Lithuania). With the far right on the rise in many parts of the continent, Sunday’s poll will be closely watched not just for its own sake, but for what it might say about the European mood.

.

* In my report on that election it says 119 seats, but the election for the two seats for European expatriates was subsequently invalidated and re-run, and the Socialists then won both of them instead of only one.