SIC/Expresso survey
The SIC/Expresso survey reveals that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa leaves a positive impression of his ten years at the Palácio de Belém. But now the Portuguese want someone more interventionist.
Now thinking about the future, comparisons are inevitable: 67% believe that the next President should intervene more than Marcelo did over these ten years.
Even so, 1/4 of respondents see no harm in the level of intervention being identical and only 6% consider that they should be less involved than the current head of state.
Firstly, what respondents hope is that the next President has a vision for the country and know how to represent Portugal.
Being close to the Portuguese is a quality but not so important.
The presidential functions that they consider to be the most important are: oblige the Government to act and monitor the Executive.
Technical Sheet
This report is based on a survey whose fieldwork took place between the 7th and 17th of November 2025. It was coordinated by a team from the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon (ICS-ULisboa) and Iscte – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (Iscte-IUL), with the fieldwork carried out by GfK Metris.
O The survey universe is made up of individuals of both sexes aged 18 or over and have active electoral capacity, residents in mainland Portugal.
Respondents were selected using the quota method, based on a matrix that crosses the variables Sex, Age (4 groups), Education (3 groups), Region (7 NUTS II Regions) and Habitat/Size of population aggregates (5 groups). From an initial matrix of Region and Habitat, 99 sampling points were randomly selected, where interviews were carried out according to the quotas mentioned above.
A information was collected through direct and personal interviews at the respondents’ homes, using the CAPI system, and the intention to vote in legislative elections was collected through simulated voting in a ballot box.
They were 2980 eligible households contacted (with household members belonging to the universe) and 807 valid interviews were obtained (27% response rate, 41% cooperation rate). The fieldwork was carried out by 36 interviewers, who received training appropriate to the specificities of the study.
All results were subject to post-stratification weighting according to the frequency of religious practice and membership of trade unions or professional associations of Portuguese citizens aged 18 or over living on the Continent, based on data from the most recent wave of the European Social Survey (Round 11).
A Maximum margin of error associated with a simple random sample of 807 respondents is +/- 3.5%, with a 95% confidence level.
