The next President of the Republic, successor to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, will only be known in a second round of elections scheduled for February 8th. It will be disputed between António José Seguro, supported by the Socialist Party, and André Ventura, who has the support of Chega. But the results of the first round reveal some curiosities about candidates in the first round.
António José Seguro won the . The candidate supported by the PS obtained 31% of the votes. In second place was André Ventura, leader of Chega, with 23%, with fewer votes than the party achieved in the May 2025 legislative elections.
João Cotrim de Figueiredo reached 16% and tripled the percentage that the Liberal Initiative achieved in the legislature. In fourth place was Henrique Gouveia e Melo, with around 12%, followed by Luís Marques Mendes (11.3). Catarina Martins, António Filipe, Manuel João Vieira follow, ahead of Jorge Pinto. And then André Pestana and Humberto Correia.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s successor will only be decided on February 8th. For now, we look at the numbers of this election night and we show you curiosities of some candidates in the first round.
António José Seguro
With more than 31% of the votes, António José Seguro was the big winner of the night. He won in all districts, with the exception of Faro and the island of Madeira. In these two cases, it was André Ventura who came first, with 33.02% of the votes and 33.40%, respectively.
The candidate supported by the PS obtained his better results in districts won by AD in the 2025 legislative elections. He had the best results in Castelo Branco (40,2%)Guard (35,91%), Coimbra (35,47%) and Beja (33,7%).
O best result of António José Seguro at national level was in his homeland (Penamacor): 71.3%. The socialist appeared to stand out from the rest of the candidates. In second place, much lower, is André Ventura, with 14.7%.
Andre Ventura
In the municipalities with the lowest per capita purchasing power, Ventura was the big winner, beating the three poorest: Porto Moniz (29.07%), Ponta do Sol (36.18%) and Tabuaço (34.22%).
In the municipalities with the most purchasing power ‘per capita’, according to 2023 data from the National Statistics Institute (INE), the socialist Seguro was the main winner, winning in Lisbon (35.15%), Porto (33.43%), Oeiras (33.64%) and Sines (36.67%).
On another point, candidate André Ventura won in Faro and Madeiraincreasing Chega’s percentage result in relation to the 2025 legislative elections, but counted on .
In the presidential elections, Ventura rose one percentage point compared to 2025 and obtained 1,321,387 votes (when 12 consulates remain to be counted), 116,494 less than in 2025.
In these elections, the vote of emigrants, a circle dominated by Chega, decreased massively (84% less) compared to the May 2025 legislative elections. Even counting only the national territory, André Ventura had 48,156 fewer votes.
João Cotrim de Figueiredo
João Cotrim de Figueiredo came in third place, behind Seguro and Ventura, but obtained the best result ever for a candidate supported by the Liberal Initiative.
The MEP also received 16% of the votes. Despite failing to reach the set goal, which was to go through to the second round, as he assumed since the start of the electoral campaign, the former IL leader was ahead of Gouveia e Melo and Marques Mendes.
Cotrim Figueiredo was the second candidate supported by IL, after the party founded in 2017 expressed, for the first time in the 2021 presidential elections, support for Tiago Mayan Gonçalves, who obtained 134,484 votes (3.22%).
Luís Marques Mendes
Luís Marques Mendes, with just 11% in the presidential elections, was one of the losers of the night. It was left very far from the lowest result ever of a candidate supported by the PSD and a long way from the AD’s most recent results.
With around 630 thousand votes, he came in an unprecedented fifth place among the candidates officially supported by the PSD for Belém. He was behind Seguro, Ventura, Cotrim Figueiredo and Gouveia e Melo.
The candidate supported by the party of the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic only won in three municipalities and all to the North: Sernancelhe, Boticas and Fafe.
Before these elections, all the figures supported by the PSD in the Presidential elections either won the elections in the first round or came in second place.
Marques Mendes was also far below the recent results of AD under the leadership of Luís Montenegrowhich in 2024 won the legislative elections with 28.3%, lost the European elections with 31% and, in 2025, won the legislative elections again with 31.8% and the local elections with around 34% of the votes.
Catarina Martins
In 50 years of presidential elections since April 25th, candidates led by men were the majority. There have been approximately 50 candidates so far, with no female contestants in 1976, 1980, 1991, 1996, 2001, 2006 and 2011.
The first female presidential candidacy was made by former Prime Minister Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, 40 years ago, in the 1986 presidential elections, in which she came in fourth and last place, with 7.38% of valid votes cast.
Only 30 years later there were other women candidates for President of the Republic: Marisa Matias, who in 2016 received approximately 470 thousand votes, 10.12%, the second best female result so far, and Maria de Belém, from the PS, who ran without the support of her party, and had close to 197 thousand votes, 4.24%.
Five years later, in the re-candidacy of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in 2021, Ana Gomes, diplomat, PS activist, who voted without the support of her party, achieved the best result for a presidential candidate so far: more than 540 thousand votes (12.96%).
In 2021, Marisa Matias obtained 3.95% of the votes (163,168 votes), a much lower result compared to the previous vote, in 2016, when she had 469,582 votes (10.12%).
Before that, in 2006, Francisco Louçã ran against five other candidates, and received the support of 288,261 voters, reaching 5.31%.
The first time that BE had a candidate for the presidential elections was in 2001, with Fernando Rosas. At the time, the leader and founder of the party created two years earlier, in 1999, was voted by 128,927, reaching 2.98% in a race contested by five candidates.
Antonio Filipe
António Filipe achieved 1.64% of the votes and came in seventh place in Sunday’s presidential elections. This means that you had the for a candidate supported by the PCP.
The former communist deputy obtained 92,468 votes, that is, a percentage of 1.64, falling below Catarina Martins and ahead of Manuel João Vieira, Jorge Pinto, André Pestana and Humberto Correia.
António Filipe’s result is the lowest for a candidate supported by the PCP since the 1976 presidential elections, the first after the 25th of April.
In 2021, the candidate supported by the PCP, João Ferreira, had 4.28% (171,322 votes). This result was seen by the PCP as a recovery compared to the result obtained by Edgar Silva’s candidacy, 10 years ago, with 3.95%.
Second round
António José Seguro or André Ventura, one of them will be the next President of the Republic. It will only be chosen on the day February 8in the second round of the Presidential elections.
In addition to the support of his party, the PS, António José Seguro has Catarina Martins, Jorge Pinto and António Filipe.
Henrique Gouveia e Melo considers that no one owns anyone when voting.
Luís Marques Mendes chooses not to interfere in the voters’ individual decisions. The President of the PSD, Luís Montenegro, assumed the bad result for the candidate he supported and did not give any indication of voting to social democratic voters.
