Portugal goes to the polls this Sunday for Legislative elections that are shaping up to be uncertain, with no clear majority in sight. The latest polling points to a tight lead for the right-wing Alliance Democratic (AD) over the Socialist Party (PS), which remains confident it can stay in government despite the surprising resignation of António Costa as prime minister last November. Costa’s hurried exit, following links to a presumed corruption case, ended the comfortable absolute majority won just two years earlier and gave room for Chega, the far-right party, to rise as the third force in Portugal’s Parliament, according to forecasts.
The most recent big survey, released by the public broadcaster RTP and the daily Público during the final stretch of the campaign, shows AD ahead with 34% of votes. The coalition, made up of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) – the main opposition party – along with the right-wing CDS and PPM, hopes to build enough support to govern in coalition with Iniciativa Liberal, a party that entered Parliament as a fourth political force in 2022. The PSD leader and AD candidate, Luís Montenegro, has sought to persuade voters with tax cuts and a plan to reduce long waiting lists in the public health system.
The Socialists, in second place in the polls with around 28% of the votes, remain determined to fight and rely on the left’s tactical vote in the campaign’s closing days. Their leader, former Infrastructure Minister Pedro Nuno Santos, has warned about austerity under the last centrist-right government led by former prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho, appealing for a vote for his party to slow down the ultraright. “Progress by other parties can only be stopped if we win the elections,” Santos said on the campaign’s final day. The strategy of the tactical vote already worked for them in 2022, when they captured a significant portion of left-wing voters at the expense of their former parliamentary allies, the Bloco de Esquerda and the Portuguese Communist Party.
The current landscape is much more challenging for the Socialist side, with a political scene tilted further to the right. Chega’s leadership has seen a meteoric rise since the party’s relatively recent founding a little over five years ago. From a meager 1.29% of votes in 2019, they could reach around 16% this time, largely due to their populist and anti-corruption rhetoric. Both the Costa government affair and the Madeira regional government’s recent scandal, which led to the Madeira president’s resignation, have jolted a protest vote from voters tired of traditional parties.
Maintaining support
The Socialists, however, remain confident they can retain backing thanks to eight years of solid economic management, characterized by job growth, rising wages, and inflation controlled below the level seen in many European peers. Santos has leaned on Costa’s support at several campaign events in the past week, illustrating the Socialists’ effort to defend this record even as the tribunal investigations into the former prime minister’s alleged irregularities in business and energy project concessions continue in court.
The socialists plan to form a government if they win, but the prospects of a right-leaning Parliament open the door to a scenario reminiscent of 2015 when the socialist loser tried to form a left-wing alliance to unseat the PSD government. This time, it could be the right-wing parties that together eclipse a socialist-led administration in minority status.
Chega’s leader, André Ventura, has said his party would only supply votes to AD in exchange for ministerial posts, but Montenegro has rejected the idea of including the far right in a hypothetical government and has insisted he would govern only if victorious. The big unresolved question remains whether the center-right leader can withstand pressure from his own party’s members who favor a Chega-backed arrangement if parliamentary support becomes necessary after polling day. “If there is a right-wing parliamentary majority, I am 99 percent sure there will be a right-wing government,” declared a defiant Ventura this week. “If someone must step aside, it will not be the right; it will be Luís Montenegro.”
AD’s leader has urged voters to cast a tactical vote to solidify a center-right government without Chega, though the final result will hinge largely on the 16% of undecided voters who will head to the polls just hours before polls open. These voters will be voting for a third time in just over five years, feeling weary and fed up, and they upended all 2022 forecasts with their late-day decisions, which left pollsters and pundits scrambling to explain the surprise shifts.