“Turnout
was 54.5%, the lowest in a general election since Portugal returned to
democracy after a rightwing dictatorship was toppled in 1974.”
Portugal
election: Socialists retain power with increased share of the vote
António
Costa bucks the trend of declining fortunes for Europe’s left, but remains
short of an outright majority
Jon Henley
Europe correspondent
@jonhenley
Mon 7 Oct
2019 07.23 BSTFirst published on Sun 6 Oct 2019 21.44 BST
The
Socialists (PS) took 36.65% of the vote, followed by the centre-right Social
Democrats (PSD) with 27.9%, according to near total results released by the
interior ministry early on Monday.
The
Socialists’ share of the vote was more than in the previous election in 2015
and followed recent electoral successes for the centre-left in Denmark, Spain,
Finland and Sweden, bucking a more general European trend of declining
centre-left fortunes.
The results
mean that the PS, which has governed for the past four years with the support
of two smaller hard-left parties, will have 106 seats in the 230-seat
parliament, up from 86 and just 10 seats short of an outright majority. Four
seats are yet to be attributed according to the results of votes cast abroad.
Negotiations
to form a government will start on Monday. In 2015, Costa – who had finished
second behind the PSD – took less than two months to seal an unexpected
alliance with the Left Bloc and the Portuguese Communist party known as the
geringonça, or improvised solution.
Four years
later, however, the hard-left is pushing for major increases in public spending
and has accused Costa of veering to the right. The prime minister has already
ruled out a formal coalition, but said in a victory speech early on Monday that
he will now seek to renew his governing pact with one or both parties.
“The
Portuguese liked our arrangement,” Costa – whose Socialists, significantly, won
more seats than the right-of-centre parties together – told cheering crowds of
supporters. “We will see if it’s possible to continue.”
The prime
minister added that he may also talk to the new People-Animals-Nature party
(PAN) party, which won four parliamentary seats and has said it is ready to
support Costa if he commits to its environmentalist platform.
Costa, 58,
has reversed some of the more unpopular austerity measures, including cuts to
public sector wages and pensions, introduced by the previous PSD-led government
in the wake of the eurozone debt crisis, while still managing to bring the
country’s budget deficit down to nearly zero.
He has won
praise both at home and in Brussels for combining fiscal discipline with
successful measures to stimulate the economy, which is now growing faster than
the EU average, helped by rising exports and a booming tourism industry that
saw more tourists visit Portugal last year than it has inhabitants.
The PSD,
still associated in the public mind with deep cutbacks and a three-year
recession that ended in 2014, was unable to profit enough from a series of
recent scandals to hit the Socialists, ranging from a nepotism row to the
alleged involvement of a former minister in an army cover-up of the theft of
weapons from a military base.
Turnout was
54.5%, the lowest in a general election since Portugal returned to democracy
after a rightwing dictatorship was toppled in 1974.
“The most
probable outcome is a Socialist party minority government with support from
radical left parties or, less likely, the small environmentalist party PAN,”
said Federico Santi, an analyst at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.
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