Elections in Portugal: the far right advances to the second round for the first time, with the socialists in the lead

BarcelonaModerate socialist António José Seguro has won the presidential election in Portugal, defeating far-right candidate André Ventura, whom he will face in a runoff. With 98.75% of the votes counted, Seguro has garnered 31% of the vote and Ventura 23.65%. However, to govern the country, Seguro will have to secure a second round of voting on February 8th. He is currently the favorite.

This is the first time since 1986 that a presidential election has required a runoff to determine the winner, highlighting the fragmentation of the political landscape with the rise of the far right and voter disillusionment with the main parties. Nevertheless, the socialists have managed to win this first round by a much wider margin than predicted by the polls. In fact, until recently, some of the leading surveys even predicted a narrow victory for the far right. José Seguro and Ventura advance to the second round, but in third place was the liberal João Cotrim de Figueiredo, of the right-wing Liberal Initiative party, who obtained 15.82% of the votes, thus confirming the rise of new parties on the Portuguese political scene. Higher turnout

More than 11 million Portuguese were called to the polls this Sunday to choose which of the 11 candidates would succeed Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. The elections were held without incident and had a 45.5% turnout, a figure slightly higher than in the previous election. This morning, the Socialist candidate who won the first round was already looking ahead to the second round: "I invite all democrats, progressives, and humanists to join us so that together we can defeat extremism and those who sow hatred and division among the Portuguese." Meanwhile, the far-right candidate warned that he wants to ensure that "Portugal is once again for the Portuguese" and asserted that the Socialist candidate is the ultimate representative "of everything the country should not accept."

Rise of newly created parties

One of the images left by the elections is that of the traditional crisis. The results show a overtaking From the far-right Chega party, led by Ventura, to the moderate right of Luís Marques Mendes, punished after attacks on his private businesses. And at the same time, voters have opted for newly created parties: while Chega—founded in 2019—took second place, the liberal Cotrim party of Figueiredo has also made a meteoric rise. Last May, the anti-establishment and anti-immigration party Chega, founded just seven years ago, became the main opposition party in parliamentary elections, with 22.8% of the vote. However, all recent opinion polls indicate that Ventura will lose the second round due to his high disapproval rating of over 60% of voters.