The socialist opposition won Portugal’s European elections, narrowly beating the centre-right ruling coalition that narrowly won March’s snap election, near-final official results show.

The far-right Sega party takes third place with 9.8% of the vote, a performance almost double that of the parliamentary elections (18%).

Not far behind was the Liberal Party, which had also finished in fourth place in March.

The ballot led by the socialist Marta Temidou, the minister of health during the pandemic of the new coronavirus, took first place with 32.1% of the votes, against 31.1% secured by the candidates of the governing alliance, led by a 28-year-old journalist who made his debut in politics, Sebastiao Bougaliou.

March parliamentary elections ended eight years of Socialist rule under Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who resigned in November after his name was implicated in an influence-peddling investigation.

The right-wing alliance, under the head of the new government Luis Montenegro, won by a narrow margin over the socialists; it lacks a majority of seats in parliament, where it is forced to work with either the opposition socialists or the far right.

Trying to convince voters, the government announced packages of measures in areas such as health, taxation, immigration…

“I recognize, as the leader of this alliance, that we did not achieve our goal,” Mr. Montenegro said in the evening, after “congratulating” the Socialist Party for its victory.