Portugal election: Three takeaways as Socialists cement power
Portugal's Socialist party (PS) won Sunday's parliamentary election but uncertainty remains as to whether it will be able to govern alone.
With more than 98.7% of the votes counted, the PS, lead by Prime Minister Antonio Costa, had secured 41.69% of the vote, 13 percentage points higher than their nearest rival, the centre-right Social Democratic Party (PSD).
The snap election was triggered two months ago when lawmakers rejected the minority Socialist government’s spending bill and the country’s president dissolved parliament.
Turnout stood at more than 57.8% — nine percentage points higher than in 2019 despite the COVID-19 pandemic. About a tenth of the population was in isolation over the weekend because they were either infected or considered risk contacts. Early voting was rolled out to allow people to cast their ballot last Sunday while people under quarantine were asked to attend their polling stations at the end of the day to minimise contact with other people.
Here are the main take-aways from this election
Support for the PS grew from 36.7% in 2019 to 41.7% this time around.
Back then, this gave them 108 seats — not enough to secure a majority in the 230-seat Assembly. It is yet unclear whether this increased support will allow them to have an absolute majority although the prospect appears unlikely.
It might therefore have to rely once more on the Left Bloc (BE) and the Communist/Green coalition (PCP/PEV) which withdrew their support in November over the annual state budget and disagreements about public health spending.
For political analyst and journalist Miguel Szymanski, the outcome of the election suggests that "the Socialist Party's strategy that triggered the snap election seems to have worked out fine: the two
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