Election of the Day: Portugal

Today, Portugal will elect a new Assembly of the Republic, its 230 seat legislature. Just over two years ago, Antonio Costa’s Socialist Party faced an early election caused by the failure of their government to negotiate a budget with their coalition partners. The voters responded by giving them an absolute majority of seats, and thus free rein to govern on their own. This would seem to open the door to a period of stable rule.

Alas, ’twas not to be. In November 2023, a longstanding corruption investigation (codename “Operation Influencer”) conducted by the Public Prosecution service of Portugal conducte a series of raids and searches targeting a number of Costa’s close associates and allies, including his Chief of Staff, over corruption and possibly bribery surrounding decisions about the approval, exploration, and siting of Lithium mines and a data center, among other things. While several arrests and charges resulted, Costa himself was not (and has not) been charged with any crimes. Nonetheless, the scandal was too great for Costa to withstand; within a few days he had tendered his resignation, and today’s snap election had been called.

Another Socialist government is likely not in the cards. The establishment center-right Social Democratic Party, led by Porto politician Luis Montenegro, has formed a coalition with some smaller conservative parties that is presently running about 5 points ahead of the Socialists, now under the leadership of Pedro Nuno Santos, a representative of a further-left faction within the party relative to Costa, in the polls. The SDP-led coalition polling in the low to mid 30’s and the Socialists around 28%. Under the Portuguese electoral system, these aren’t the kind of numbers that’ll get you a majority; you need close to or over 40% to have a chance at that. (The Socialists got their majority with 4 seats to spare with 41.4% in 2022.) There are real questions about what a governing coalition might look like, because the #3 party will be Chega. It appears the days of a Lusophonic exception to the rise of illiberal far right nationalist parties across Europe has, like all good things, come to an end. Chega made a modest advance in 2022 (7%, 12 seats, up from 1% and 1 in 2019), and they appear to be well positioned to build on their gains. Their campaign has opportunistically centered on increasing the severity of punishments for political corruption, suggesting that Costa and his allies stand to get off way too easily. Too his credit, Montenegro has publicly ruled out a coalition with Chega.

This raises some basic math questions about where a government comes from, if the results today track recent polling. Chega’s polling average is around 16%, although notably they have been slipping a bit at the end of the campaign, seemingly to SDP’s benefit. Nonetheless, it is far from clear the other small parties will provide either the SDP of the Socialists with enough seats from smaller potential coalition partners to get to a parliamentary majority. Portugal has a history of minority governments, and it’s not implauisble Montenegro will soon have to try his hand at it. We’ll know soon enough.