Lisbon-With more than 99% of the ballot boxes, the Central Democratic Alliance Central-right coalition of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, who fell in February, is the great victor of legislative elections in Portugal on Sunday (18). AD records 32.7% of the votes, while the Socialist Party (PS) and arrives, far right, draw in second place, with about 23% each.
Earlier, Boca de Urna research was already pointing out the victory of the center right, and a staunch clash between center-left and far right for the second largest number of seats in the Portuguese parliament.
“It is demonstrated that the political crisis was created by the oppositions. It was indeed totally unnecessary and, in fact, the PS that caused it, was therefore strongly penalized, suffering a heavy defeat,” said Nuno Melo, president of CDS, a partner party in the campaign’s headquarters in central Lisbon.
“We will continue to govern in Portugal as we did in 11 months, but wanting to do in four years,” he said.
Check out the distribution of seats in Parliament to each party missing less than 1% to total the votes:
- AD: 89
- PS: 58
- Enough: 58
- Liberal Initiative: 9
- Book: 6
- CDU: 3
- JPP: 1
- PAN: 1
- Left Block: 1
Socialists the great defeated; Far-right grows
The biggest defeated of the day is the PS, by Pedro Nuno Santos, who records the worst result since the 1980s, and the third most negative in his history. In speech at the party’s headquarters, Nuno Santos said he will leave the acronym leadership, quoting “hard and difficult times to the left.”
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Already the UltraDireitists of the arrival celebrate the result, which raises the party to the second largest strength in Portugal, dividing with the PS. “The arrival killed today bipartisanship in Portugal,” the arrival president told journalists shortly after the first polls are released. “Thank you for believing that it was possible to break 50 years of an always equal political system,” he said.
New government
With these numbers, AD will depend on alliances to form government – a scenario that was already foreseen in the latest research, reinforced by the projections of the ballot box.
In addition to the political dispute, one of the central themes of the election was the possibility of change in the rules for granting Portuguese citizenship. AD, which leads the current government, argues to increase from five to ten years the minimum residence time for immigrants requesting nationality, which can directly affect more than 500,000 Brazilians living in Portugal.
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This was the third legislative claim in three years in the country, the result of a continuous political crisis marked by the resignation of socialist António Costa in 2023 and the fall of the Montenegro government in March this year.
Preliminary figures released by the Portuguese Catholic University point to estimate of electoral participation between 58% and 64%, values that indicate at least equal abstention level, or perhaps even higher, than in the last election. In March last year, electoral participation was 59.8%.
