Welcome to LisbonWire, a news service created to keep English speaking Lisboetas up to speed on the news you need to make the most of life in Iberia’s city on seven hills.
Our first post is a special edition aimed at demystifying this weekend’s presidential runoff for those new to Portuguese politics.
Still trying to nail down the difference between PS and PSD? Unclear about the powers of the Prime Minister and the President? You’ve come to the right place.
What’s Happening?
On Sunday (February 8) Portuguese voters will go to the polls to choose between the two top vote-getters from a January first-round election that saw a field of 11 candidates scrap it out to replace current President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who has held the office since 2016.
With no candidate receiving an outright majority in January, the election advanced to a runoff between the two leading candidates, the first election to advance to a second round since 1986.
Who’s on the ballot
Voters on Sunday will choose between António José Seguro, the former Socialist Party (PS) leader who drew the most votes in the first round, and André Ventura whose right-wing populist Chega party has grown from a single seat in parliament in 2019 to the second largest party in Palácio São Bento last year.
The contest has largely been framed as a referendum on the post-1974 status quo, with the center-left Seguro positioning himself as the moderate against the insurgent anti-establishment Ventura.
What’s at stake?
Under Portugal’s semi-presidentialist system, the president’s powers are limited. In practice, parliament is the main driver of the policy agenda, with the president exerting influence through appeals to public opinion and a limited ability to check parliamentary power.
The president can veto legislation from parliament, but that veto can be overcome by a simple majority vote. The president can also refer laws to the judiciary for constitutional review and call early parliamentary elections.
Those powers, while limited, will be enhanced for the incoming president due to the governing party’s lack of a ruling majority in parliament, Patricia Silva, a political science professor at the University of Aveiro told LisbonWire.
“The President has relevant formal and informal powers, which gain particular importance when the Government is in a minority,” Silva said.
The center-right governing Democratic Alliance (AD) coalition led by PSD Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, did not advance a candidate to the second round of voting, as the PSD saw its candidate Luís Marques Mendes fall to fifth place in the first round with less than 12% of the vote.
Seguro has vowed to work with parliament to improve the country’s healthcare system, while supporting public safety net programs more broadly. But the central message of his campaign has been one of unity and moderation, in the face of the fractious Ventura’s rise.
Since the first round of elections last month, Seguro has garnered widespread support from the left and prominent figures among the center-right, who have expressed concern over the divisive Ventura’s “radical” agenda.
Ventura, meanwhile, has risen to prominence on the strength of an anti-immigrant, anti-establishment populist politics. In a few short years he has built Chega into a party that rivals the PS and PSD, which have together dominated Portuguese politics as the two main rival parties since the fall of the authoritarian Estado Novo in 1974. Ventura has advocated for lower taxes, a trimmed-down bureaucracy, and stark restrictions on immigration.
Ventura’s political rise has sparked concerns among political moderates and scholars of populism and authoritarianism, due to the centrality of “authoritarian legacies of ‘law and order,’ welfare chauvinism, and anti-elite resentment,” to his politics.
The Likely Outcome
Seguro is widely considered the prohibitive favorite. According to Silva, Seguro benefits from both personal popularity among voters and a broader coalition that has aligned to block Chega’s rise.
While Ventura has built a strong voting base through fiery rhetoric and promises to tear down the status quo, a moderate coalition has emerged to counter the perceived far-right threat represented by Chega’s rise.
“Just as André Ventura seeks to polarize these elections — something to be expected in a second-round context — António José Seguro also ends up benefiting from this polarization, positioning himself as a moderate alternative and as a choice in defense of democracy,” Silva said.
But even with Seguro expected to win comfortably, the election can already be seen as a victory for Chega, both in terms of its growing vote share and the real political power the insurgent party is likely to wield going forward.
As Silva explains, Ventura’s strong showing has solidified Chega’s position as a force in Portuguese politics, amplifying the party’s ability to apply pressure from the right on the PSD government’s agenda.
“The presidential elections confirmed Chega's relevance. The party can no longer be seen as marginal, and it is clear that there is a significant, stable and mobilized electorate around André Ventura. This is an electorate that can no longer be ignored in any political debate or reform process,” Silva said.
If Seguro wins on Sunday as expected, Montenegro’s minority government will need to find ways compromise with the center-left president, even as it guards its flank from an emboldened Chega on the right.
“The experience of previous presidents shows that a significant part of the government's legislation tends to be negotiated in advance with the President, rather than simply vetoed or promulgated. Thus, a victory for António José Seguro would tend to reinforce a scenario of institutional cooperation between the government and the President, without changing the party framework or leading to a coalition between PS and AD,” Silva said.
Broader Context
The first-round results signified a reversal in fortunes for the two mainstream parties, since the most recent parliamentary elections, less than a year ago.
Last May’s snap elections saw PS’ vote share fall to just 22.8%, a steep drop from the 28.8% it won just 14 months prior. Meanwhile, the center-right coalition between the PSD and People’s Democratic Party (PPD) picked up 11 seats in parliament, maintaining control of government, though falling short of an outright majority.
But, as Silva explains, the dismal performance of the PSD’s Marques Mendes does not necessarily serve as a rebuke to the government of PSD Prime Minister Luís Montenegro.
“In presidential elections, voting is more personalized and less dependent on party loyalties. Voters feel freer to vote depending on the candidate's profile, their credibility and the political signal they want to send. Marques Mendes' campaign was not particularly effective, failed to mobilize some important groups and was also affected by doubts surrounding his political path,” Silva said.
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