Never in the last 20 years have presidential elections in Portugal aroused so much interest. As of 4:00 p.m. (an hour longer in mainland Spain), 45.51% of the 11 million voters with the right to choose had voted. Participation exceeds that recorded in the previous four presidential elections, when Aníbal Cavaco Silva (2006-2016) and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa (2016-2026) were elected.
On the ten previous occasions that they have gone to the polls to elect the head of state, abstention has sometimes exceeded 50% and reached its highest peak in 2021 (60.8%), in the middle of the pandemic, when he won his second term.
That demobilization was helped by the fact that the socialists did not support any of their own and were betting on the continuity of Rebelo de Sousa, a strategy of António Costa, then prime minister and leader of the Socialist Party, to keep his relationship with the president of the Republic oiled, despite being someone from the Social Democratic Party (PSD, center-right).
Since then, the Portuguese have elected five presidents of the Republic at the polls. The first to be elected by suffrage was the soldier António Ramalho Eanes, who remained at the head of the State until 1985. Forty years later, another soldier, the admiral in reserve Henrique Gouveia e Melo, once again has the option of becoming a tenant of the Belém palace, the official seat of the presidency. Although polls have shown a deterioration in voters’ sympathies, Gouveia e Melo is one of the February 8.
The Portuguese vote among 11 candidates, among whom there is only one woman, the former coordinator of the Left Bloc, Catarina Martins. Neither she nor two other representatives of the left (Communist Party and Livre) who compete exceed 5% in the polls, which has led the socialist António José Seguro to appeal to the useful vote to advance to the second round.
Sure, retired from politics a decade ago when he was defeated in a primary by António Costa in a battle that continues to fester, he is one of the surprises of the campaign. Nobody trusted the momentum of his candidacy, not even among many of his own, but he has managed to impose himself as a non-shrill and predictable candidate, who is among the favorites to advance to the second round.
The third best placed in the latest polls is the liberal João Cotrim de Figueiredo. Another surprise. MEP and former leader of the Liberal Initiative, a party founded in 2017, Cotrim has climbed from the bottom to the top positions with a very dynamic campaign on social networks. Some mistakes in recent days, however, could take their toll. He announced that, in a hypothetical second round against the socialist Seguro, although he later retracted: “I don’t know where his head was.”
In addition, a complaint came to light from a former advisor of his for sexual harassment, denied by him and his party, but with testimonies in the press that prove that the victim already reported her case in 2024 to the authors of the work. #MeToo A Very Public Secret—Sexual Harassment in Portugal during the Lisbon Book Fair.
is the favorite to advance to the second round, with 24% support in the polls. He has run a more restrained campaign than he usually does in legislative elections, although without giving up his attacks against minorities and immigrants. He was sentenced by a court to remove billboards from his campaign with the slogan “Gypsies have to follow the law” for promoting “intolerance, segregation, discrimination and, basically, hatred.”
Ventura, who received almost half a million votes when he ran for president in 2021, is confident of continuing to expand his electoral space, which has not stopped growing in the six years of his party’s life. In the 2025 legislative elections, where he was also a candidate for prime minister, he received 1.4 million votes and overtook the Socialist Party.
If the space on the left has been divided into four candidates, that on the right has been divided into three. In addition to Ventura and Cotrim de Figueiredo, Luís Marques Mendes is presented with the support of the PSD. A former television commentator and former party leader, he has the support of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, who has supported him in some events. He started the race with the title of favorite, but the offensive of other candidates against him for his private businesses has damaged his prospects. Tonight it will be known whether the wound was fatal or not.
