The overwhelming victory of the socialists in Portugal was guaranteed by a useful vote on the left

Contrary to the polls of voting intentions in the final stretch of the campaign, the Socialist Party achieved a significant victory in Portugal and secured an absolute majority in the legislative elections last Sunday (30). Political scientists attribute the disparity between the polls and the final result to a combination of factors that mobilized the electorate to the left for the so-called useful vote.

The concentration of votes in the PS was mainly at the expense of the dehydration of the performance of smaller parties further to the left. Former partners of the socialists in the contraption — as the coalition formed in 2015 uniting this traditionally divided political segment was called —, the Left Bloc and the Portuguese Communist Party will have less than half the deputies they had in the previous legislature.

Polls released during election week, which signaled a technical tie between socialists and the largest opposition party, the center-right PSD (Social Democratic Party), are seen as one of the great catalysts for this useful vote.

“The possibility of a right-wing majority was probably something artificial, built on the basis of polls that emerged in the last week of the campaign. In the end, it helped to mobilize the useful vote for the socialists”, evaluates Francisco Pereira Coutinho, a professor at the Universidade Nova de Lisbon.

The PS’s surprising defeat in the municipal elections in Lisbon, four months ago, may have weighed on the weight, according to him. At the time, although all polls indicated a comfortable victory for Mayor Fernando Medina, the center-right ended up taking the capital from the hands of the left for the first time in 14 years, electing Carlos Moedas, from the PSD.

It is believed that, considering the bill settled, part of the electorate on the left in Lisbon did not turn up at the polls – voting is not mandatory in the country, and the election had a record of abstention.

“Sometimes, when there is a dynamic of the match already having an expected winner, part of the electorate tends to demobilize. It can be interpreted that this was the case among PS voters, assuming that Medina was already reelected”, says the scientist. Paula Espírito Santo, professor at the Institute of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lisbon.

In the opinion of experts, the migration of the vote from the left to the PS also indicates a penalty to the former partners of the contraption for calling early elections. In October, BE and communists voted with the right to disapprove the Socialist Executive Budget for 2022, which made President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa choose to dissolve Parliament.

For much of the campaign, the prime minister, António Costa, adopted the discourse of accountability to former allies and insisted that only a reinforced socialist majority would bring stability to the country. Blocists and communists, in turn, accused the premier of having provoked the anticipation of the election precisely aiming at an absolute majority.

“It was a brilliant political move by Costa, who achieved an absolute majority on the third attempt. And let’s be objective: in 2019, he possibly even had more political conditions than now”, says Pereira Coutinho.

With at least 117 of the 230 deputies in Parliament —the count for the four seats of Portuguese living abroad had not ended until the publication of this text—, the PS will not need other parties to impose its legislative agenda.

In his victory speech, however, the prime minister stated that he intends to maintain dialogue. “An absolute majority is not absolute power, it is not governing alone,” he said. “This majority will be a majority of dialogue, with all the political forces that represent the Portuguese in their plurality.”

Costa said he will not meet with representatives of the far-right party Chega, which should become the third force in Parliament.

Faced with the opposition’s reduced capacity for maneuver, analysts are betting on Rebelo de Sousa’s performance as a way to guide the government’s action. “Opponents, even in coalitions, will not be able to do much, except for some legislation that requires more than half of the votes in Parliament, but the president can. If he understands, he can dissolve Parliament again”, says Pereira Coutinho.

Portugal has a semi-presidential regime, in which the head of government is in charge of the prime minister, while the president is the head of state – whose main power is precisely to dissolve the legislature and dismiss the government.

Although he was elected as an independent, the current president, Rebelo de Sousa, had a long political career in the PSD, of which he was leader. The relationship between him and António Costa, who was a professor and a student at the Faculty of Law, has not had major public upheavals so far.

Despite the socialist victory, the parties on the right increased their result by more than 400,000 votes compared to the previous election. The performance was driven by the growth of two parties further to the right of the PSD: Chega and Iniciativa Liberal, which rose respectively to the position of third and fourth largest bench in Parliament.

“While on the left we had a useful voting dynamic, in which voters transferred the vote to ensure the previous government stability, the right underwent a reconfiguration”, analyzes Paula Espírito Santo. “She ended up driven by a logic of new interests and partisan offers.”

Both parties debuted in Parliament in 2019 and had, in the last legislature, only one deputy each; now, there will be at least 20 in total, 12 from Chega and 8 from IL.

In line with other populist legends of the European right, such as Vox from Spain, Chega presents itself as anti-system, is often accused of discriminatory speech against Roma communities and has had members linked to neo-Nazi organizations.

Party leader André Ventura was convicted of “offending the right to honor” for having called bandits, during a TV debate, members of a black family living in a housing project.

The Liberal Initiative, on the other hand, bets on the discourse of classical liberalism, with proposals for administrative modernization and reduction of the role of the State. The growth of the two newcomers contrasts with the electoral failure of one of the most traditional parties of the Portuguese right: the CDS-PP, for the first time since redemocratization, failed to elect any deputy.