A heart-pounding head-to-head match that will give rise to the most fragmented parliament in Portugal's history and will make the creation of a new government extremely difficult, with the country potentially being forced to experiment with the formula of broad Italian-style agreements. They can be summarized like this the results of the Portuguese elections. The real winner? Neither the conservatives of the Democratic Alliance, who officially achieved very limited success, nor the Socialist Party, but “Chega”, a far-right political force led by André Ventura, which went from 7% in 2022 to 18% today.
Portugal: the conservatives of the Democratic Alliance win
“Won” would be a big word, we can say that the conservatives of the Democratic Alliance (Ad) prevailed in the legislative elections in Portugal. However, the advantage over the Socialist Party gradually diminished during the complicated counting of the results, so much so that the counting continued well after midnight.
In the end, both in fact, the formations stand at around 29%, but the coalition led by Luís Montenegro, made up of the Social Democratic Party, the People's Party of the CDS-PP and the monarchists, overtook Pedro Nuno Santos's party thanks to just over 50 thousand votes and the three seats obtained by the PSD and the People's Party on the island of Madeira, where the two parties did not present themselves with the symbol of Ad. The result is: 29,5% of the votes for the conservatives, 28,7% for the socialists.
The socialist leader Santos acknowledged defeat and announced that he will not present or approve any motion of no confidence in a possible minority government in Montenegro, which in turn said it was ready to govern without betraying the promise made during the electoral campaign: "No is no" he repeated to those who asked him if he would have governed with Chega's far right.
Portugal: Chega's far-right boom
Enough, which means “Enough” in Portuguese, is a nationalist, populist, Eurosceptic and ultra-conservative led by André Ventura who in just 5 years managed to establish himself on the national political scene. In fact, his debut took place in 2019, first in the European elections, where he obtained 1,6% of the votes, then in the legislative elections, where he won 1,3% of the preferences and only one seat in the Lisbon constituency. In 2022, the party rose to 7,3% and 12 seats.
In the legislative elections of 2024, Chega instead obtained 18% of the votes and 48 deputies. “This night will go down in history in Portugal, for a reason: this is the night in which the bipartisanship of this country ended,” he commented. Ventura, according to which his party "will actually win the elections in six months, one or two years". “The Portuguese have given the majority to the conservatives,” he added, arguing that it would be “irresponsible not to form a right-wing government now”.
Portugal: uphill road for the new Government
Even with the help of the small Liberal Initiative party (5%), it will be difficult for Democratic Alliance leader Luís Montenegro and his 79 deputies to govern so far from the absolute majority, equal to 116 seats. This is why, in his speech at the end of the long night marathon, the conservative leader asked dialogue and responsibility to all political forces present in parliament. Considering Montenegro's repeated No to an alliance with the far right, one of the very few viable options would be that of a government of broad agreements between socialists and moderates, with an executive perhaps led by Montenegro itself.
The other parties of this XVI legislature will be the Left Bloc (4,4%), the coalition of communists and greens (3,3%), the pro-European left party Livre (3,2%) and the animal rights activists of the PAN ( 1,9%).
