Opinion polling carried out just before Portugal’s general election on Sunday seemed to promise a cliffhanger, with prime minister António Costa’s socialists (PS) on 36 per cent, just three points ahead of the centre-right social democrats (PSD) and the gap closing all the time. As the results now show, the polls could scarcely have been more wrong: on the day, the PS won almost 42 per cent of the vote to the PSD’s 28 per cent.
The election was caused by the refusal, last November, of the socialists' radical allies, the Left Bloc (BE) and the communists, to endorse the minority government's budget for 2022, acceptance of which was required for Portugal to draw down substantial post-Covid recovery funds from the EU. The PS had, since 2015, depended on the support in parliament of the radical left and it seemed likely again before Sunday's vote that neither of the two big parties would emerge with enough seats to govern alone. That expectation has now been overturned, with the socialists winning a slender absolute majority.
The PSD has blamed its poor showing on disunity in the right-wing camp, coupled with the decision of left-wing voters to plump for the PS. Certainly the radical left’s withdrawal of backing for the government did not play well with many of its former supporters. The communists lost half of the 12 seats they had won in 2019 while the Left Bloc lost 14 of their 19. On the right, there was success for two new formations, the market-fundamentalist Liberal Initiative and the far-right populist Chega (Enough), which had one seat each in 2019 and now have eight and 12 respectively.
Prime minister António Costa has presided, since 2015, over his country’s emergence from austerity, a major drop in unemployment, increases in the minimum wage and in social benefits and skilled management of the Covid crisis. Voters seem to have decided that this is a record that merits another four years in office. The less welcome news is that Portugal now has a powerful extreme right movement for the first time since the restoration of democracy in 1974.