Portugal
votes in tight presidential race with far right poised to reach runoff
Opinion
polls suggest three candidates, including anti-immigration Chega party leader,
close to final two
Reuters
Sun 18
Jan 2026 13.32 CET
Portuguese
voters queued at polling stations on Sunday to elect a new president, with
opinion surveys showing three candidates, including the leader of the far-right
Chega party, close to a spot in a probable top-two runoff.
In the
five decades since Portugal threw off its fascist dictatorship, a presidential
election has only once before – in 1986 – required a runoff, highlighting how
fragmented the political landscape has become with the rise of the far right
and voters’ disenchantment with mainstream parties.
The
presidency is a largely ceremonial role in Portugal but wields some key powers,
including, in some circumstances, to dissolve parliament, call a snap
parliamentary election and veto legislation.
Approximately
11 million voters are eligible to cast ballots. Polling stations will close at
7pm, with exit polls expected at 8pm and results released during the night.
The last
pre-election opinion survey released on Friday by Pitagórica pollsters put the
Socialist party candidate, António José Seguro, on 25.1%, followed by Chega’s
leader, André Ventura, on 23%, and João Cotrim de Figueiredo, a member of the
European parliament from the rightwing, pro-business Liberal Initiative party,
on 22.3%.
Last May,
the anti-establishment, anti-immigration Chega, founded about seven years ago,
became the main opposition party in a parliamentary election, winning 22.8% of
the vote.
Some
polls over the past week showed Ventura slightly ahead, but always within the
margin of error, and all runoff projections point to him losing owing to his
high rejection rate of more than 60% of voters.
The
Economist Intelligence Unit said in a recent note that a Seguro-Ventura runoff
“would be more straightforward given his [Ventura’s] limited appeal beyond his
core base” while a clash involving Cotrim de Figueiredo would be more finely
balanced and harder to predict.
“While
the presidency is largely symbolic, Ventura is the only candidate signalling a
more interventionist approach, though EIU sees this as unlikely to translate
into victory,” it said.
There are
another eight contenders, including Luís Marques Mendes backed by the ruling
centre-right Social Democrats, and the retired admiral Henrique Gouveia e Melo,
who led the country’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign, each with more than 11%.
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