The centre-right narrowly won the political elections in Portugal, where the early consultations on 10 March led to the most fragmented Parliament ever while the big winner is Chega's far right which more than doubled the votes and quadrupled the seats in the 'Assembleia da República.
According to the results published from the Ministry of the Interior in Lisbon, the centre-right coalition Democratic Alliance (AD), which includes the Partido Social Democrata (PSD), the Centro Democrático Social – Partido Popular (Cds-Pp) and the Partido Popular Monárquico (PPM), has won 28.63 percent of the votes, however electing – thanks to the result of the coalition in Madeira – 79 out of 230 deputies to the country's only chamber.
According to the Socialists (PS) of former prime minister Antonio Costa, who resigned in November after eight years in power due to a scandal over alleged illegalities in various large works and since then replaced by Nuno Santos, who obtained 28.66 percent of the votes votes but they elected “only” 77 deputies in Parliament, a debacle compared to the 41.4% (equal to 120 seats) recorded only two years ago, when the so-called “useful vote” prevailed to prevent a majority with the extreme right.
The most important result was recorded by the extremists of Chega, the party founded five years ago by the former priest Andre Ventura, who obtained 18.1 percent of the preferences, more than doubling the votes compared to 2022 when they took the 7.2%, and quadrupling the number of deputies from 12 to 48.
But the entire left is in crisis: if the Bloco de Esquerda (Be) holds, which with 4.5 percent records almost the same result as in 2022, the alliance between communists and ecologists united in the Coligação Democrática Unitária ( Cdu-Pcp-Pev) goes from 4.3 to 3.3 percent.
“The AD won the elections,” the center-right leader Luís Montenegro told his supporters today, inviting the other political parties to “satisfy the wishes of the Portuguese people”. However, the narrow victory of the Democratic Alliance and the fragmentation of the political framework is such that it is not yet clear who will take over from Prime Minister Santos. Meanwhile, Montenegro has made it known that he does not intend to form a coalition with Chega's far right.
An alliance with the centrist Liberal Initiative, who obtained 5 percent of the votes (equal to approximately 8 seats), would not, however, have the numbers necessary to reach a majority of 116 deputies. It will therefore be up to the major parties to find an agreement and to the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, to nominate a new prime minister to send to the Chamber to gain confidence.
The only positive result seems limited to turnout: participation in the legislative elections was the highest in the last 20 years, according to the Portuguese Ministry of the Interior, with a percentage of 66.24 percent of those entitled to vote.
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