Portugal elects president next Sunday, January 18, in the presidential elections most open in decades. The polls predict a technical tie between the favorite candidates, so it is not ruled out that there is a second round if no one gets the minimum number of votes necessary. These elections will decide who is the successor of the current head of state, the conservative Marcelo Rebelo de Sousawhich has already exhausted the two mandates allowed by the Portuguese Constitution.
The evolution of the polls collected by the newspaper ‘Público’ reflects an enormous equality between five of the 11 candidates running for the presidential elections, with a slight advantage in the lead of the leader of the far-right Chega, Andre Ventura. In a range of just four points, four other candidates move: the former minister and conservative political commentator Luís Marques Mendes; the former general secretary of the Socialist Party António José Seguro; the former chief of the Navy Staff and admiral in the reserve Henrique Gouveia e Melo and the MEP João Cotrim Figueiredosupported by the Liberal Initiative (IL).
Brands Mendeswho was in the past president of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the center-right party now led by the current prime minister, Luis Montenegrohas received the support of the Government, while Insurancewho was a minister in the governments of the current UN Secretary General, António Guterreshas the endorsement of the socialists.
Beyond the support of each candidate, the polls have been mutating in recent months regarding the possible winner, going from Gouveia e Melo In the first polls, Brands Mendes y Insurance in recent weeks already Venturain the last few days. What most of the estimates do agree on is the possibility that there is a second rounda circumstance that has only occurred once in democracy, in 1986, when the socialist Mario Soares triumphed in a very close second round against the Christian Democrat Diogo Freitas do Amaral.
Another point of convergence of the different surveys is that, if there is a second round, if none of the candidates obtains more than half of the votes in the first, Ventura He would be one of the two contenders in that second vote, but would not be guaranteed final victory.
Among the 11 presidential candidates there is only one woman, the MEP and former coordinator of the Left Bloc Catarina Martins. The five remaining candidates are the union member André Pestana; the co-founder of the environmental party Livre Jorge Pinto; the communist leader Antonio Filipe; the painter Humberto Correia and the musician Manuel João Vieira.
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