The exit polls point to socialist, António José Seguro, in the first round of the presidential elections held this Sunday in Portugal, followed by two candidates of the new politics, the ultra André Ventura and the liberal Joao Cotrim de Figueiredo. The second round will be held on February 8. If the predictions are confirmed, the Portuguese will then have to choose whether they want a politician from a new party or a center-left moderate at the head of the State. is beginning to become clearer, although the equality between several candidates in second position keeps the scenario open to changes in the coming hours, as the official scrutiny progresses.
The RTP poll gives Seguro as the probable winner of the elections, with a range of between 30 and 35% of the votes, followed by the ultra André Ventura (20 to 24%). Also those of the SIC network and that of CNN Portugal point to both as the most voted among the 11 candidates running to succeed.
The projections place João Cotrim de Figueiredo in third place, with a range of between 16 and 21%, which puts him very close to Ventura. Luís Marques Mendes and Henrique Gouveia e Melo have been penalized most in votes, below 14% in all estimates.
These five candidates have always led the polls during the electoral campaign, although the latest ones showed sharp falls for Marques Mendes, a popular television commentator and former leader of the center-right who for weeks seemed the favorite, and Henrique Gouveia e Melo, an admiral in the reserve who has been losing part of the popularity he gained as the person responsible for pandemic vaccination as he struggled in the mud of politics.
Contrary to the usual trend of recent presidential elections, abstention has decreased on this occasion. Until 4:00 p.m. (an hour longer in mainland Spain) they had voted. None of the polls point to a victory of more than 50% for any candidate, which will force a second round to be held, something that had only happened four decades ago, when the socialist Mário Soares and the Christian Democrat Diogo Freitas do Amaral competed for the position.
But nothing is as groundbreaking for Portuguese democracy as the fact that an ultra candidate has been able to attract more support than the candidate of the moderate right, Luís Marques Mendes, punished after attacks on his private businesses. At stake in these elections was also the hegemony of the right-wing space, for which three candidates were competing: Ventura (Chega), Marques Mendes (PSD) and João Cotrim de Figueiredo (Liberal Initiative).
Cotrim de Figueiredo, former leader of the Liberal Initiative, a party founded in 2017, starred in the most dazzling rise of the campaign. Like Ventura, he is another representative of new parties that shows the vigor of movements that grow with the promise of breaking with the established and that have great traction among young people. Ventura frequently questions “the April regime,” in reference to while the IL advocates for a jibarization of the State although his oratory is less incendiary than that of Chega.
That more conciliatory image that Cotrim had was partly broken in this campaign, when he confessed that he would support Ventura in a hypothetical second round against the socialist Seguro. “I don’t know where my head was,” he later corrected. He has also been weighed down by the disclosure of a complaint of sexual harassment, denied by both him and his party. The case was spread without the consent of the victim, who had already told her story in 2024 to the authors of the work#MeToo A Very Public Secret—Sexual Harassment in Portugal during the Lisbon Book Fair.
Portugal is a semi-presidential republic, which tries to balance the powers between the Assembly of the Republic (the unicameral Parliament), the Government and the President of the Republic, owner of a role that goes beyond the institutional one. He can dissolve the Assembly, dismiss the Government, veto laws, set the date of all elections or pardon prisoners, in addition to being the supreme head of the Armed Forces. His intervention in politics can be decisive, as has happened in the second term of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who dissolved Parliament on three occasions and called early legislative elections.
