Right-Wing Wins Portugal’s Elections

March 10, 2024 Hour: 4:35 pm

With 95,04% of the votes counted, the conservative coalition Democratic Alliance (AD, center-right) leads with 30,8% of the votes this Sunday’s legislative elections in Portugal, which defines it as a clear winner.

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In second place is positioned with 28,5% the Socialist Party (PS), led by Nuno Santos, and as third force appears the André Ventura’s ultra-right party Chega (“Enough”), with 19.23% of the support, according to data provided by the Ministry of Internal Administration (of the Interior).

As the count progresses it becomes increasingly clear that AD would win the election, but that it would possibly need the votes of the Chega ultrarightists for an absolute majority, a possibility to which the leader of the center-right coalition, Luís Montenegro, has denied for active and passive.

So it looks as if the center-right bloc has won the elections in Portugal. But one of the real winners of the evening is this guy: Former football commentator and head of the far-right populist party Chega. They have doubled their votes – and might become the new kingmakers. pic.twitter.com/EYvpn3fVfW

— Jan-Philipp Scholz (@jp_scholz)
March 10, 2024

These preliminary results indicate a turn of the country to the right, after more than eight years of Socialist Prime Minister António Costa’s government, and also reveal a great advance of the far right, which in the legislative elections of 2022 took 12 seats when it achieved 7,18% of the votes.

João Torres, deputy secretary general of the PS, admits, according to the results, that everything points to an outcome in which the PS remains “below expectations”, becoming now the second largest force, that is, the “leader of the opposition” party.

Were called to the polls this Sunday in Portugal some 10.8 million voters, where only 55.86% voted. Even so the figure is over 48.57% recorded in total in 2019 and 51.42% in 2022.

The day passed in calm and with little inconvenience, only the complaints of the conservative coalition Democratic Alliance, which denounced that some voters confused their ballot with that of another party with a similar name, National Democratic Alternative.