While in 1986 the right was united and the left was divided, now the right dominates two thirds of parliament but is dispersed across three different candidacies, while the left concentrates votes in Seguro.
Sunday’s presidential elections dictated a second round between António José Seguro and André Ventura, a scenario that had only happened once, 40 years ago, but with an opposite political scenario, between Freitas do Amaral and Mário Soares.
In the 1986 presidential elections, the parties on the right were united around Freitas do Amaralsupported by PSD and CDS, which gathered more than 46.31% of the votes cast, insufficient, however, to win in the first round, while the political space on the left, although with a majority vote, was divided between three candidacies.
The former prime minister Mário Soares, supported by the PS, went through to the second round, with 25.43% — in which he later emerged victorious, with 51.18%, defeating Freitas. In third place was Salgado Zenha, who left the PS and ran with support from the PRD, then President Ramalho Eanes and the PCP, and in fourth Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, an independent for whom the UDP declared support.
Sunday’s elections, in contrast, took place in a context in which the right represents more than two thirds of parliament, which was reflected in the presidential vote, but the main parties in this hemisphere supported three different candidacies, while on the left there was a greater concentration of votes for former PS general secretary António José Seguro, who ended up in first place, with 31.1%.
The candidacy of António José Seguro, who the PS came to support, was this time the only one from his party’s area and was ahead of André Ventura, president of Chega, who had 23.5%, with whom he will compete in a second round. The other candidates supported by parties on the right were João Cotrim Figueiredo, from IL, the third most voted, and Luís Marques Mendes, from the PSD, who came in fifth.
In comparison to the 1986 presidential elections, which were disputed by four, after the withdrawal of Ângelo Veloso, a candidate supported by the PCP, in favor of Salgado Zenha, Sunday’s elections had more than twice as many candidates, 11, in total, one of which was the independent Henrique Gouveia e Melo, who initially appeared prominent in opinion studies.
According to the provisional results released by the General Secretariat of the Ministry of Internal Administration, Henrique Gouveia e Melo, former Chief of Staff of the Navy, who presented himself as being above the parties, was the fourth most voted, with 12.3% of the votes.
As for the parties to the left of the PS, which in this legislature have 10 deputies in the Assembly of the Republic, less than 5% of the hemicycle, together they obtained an even lower percentage of votes cast in these presidential elections.
Livre, which is the party that now has the largest parliamentary representation of these three, supported Jorge Pinto, who even during the campaign suggested that voters vote for other candidates who defend the Constitution, against André Ventura, and ended up in ninth place, with 0.68%.
