Portugal
Votes for President, With Leftist Set to Beat Surging Far Right
Polls
predict a comfortable victory for António José Seguro, but a nationalist’s
presence in the runoff showed that Portugal is not immune to Europe’s rising
nationalist tide.
Jason
Horowitz
By Jason
Horowitz
Jason
Horowitz is the Madrid bureau chief, leading coverage of Spain and Portugal.
Feb. 8,
2026, 11:07 a.m. ET
Portugal
held presidential elections on Sunday, with polls suggesting that António José
Seguro, a former leader of Portugal’s Socialist Party with wide establishment
support, was headed for a convincing victory over his nationalist opponent,
André Ventura.
The far
right’s presence in the runoff nevertheless alarmed the European
establishment. It suggested that
Portugal, once considered one of the Continent’s last holdouts against
hard-line nationalism, was no longer immune to the populist wave. Initial
results were expected on Sunday evening.
Mr.
Seguro’s commanding lead in the polls was due in part, analysts said, to
mainstream conservative backing of his candidacy in order to beat back Mr.
Ventura and his surging Chega party. (Chega means “enough” in Portuguese.) Mr.
Ventura won nearly a quarter of the vote during the crowded first round of
voting in January, putting him into Sunday’s runoff against Mr. Seguro, who
topped the first round with nearly a third of the votes.
“Portugal’s
old reputation as an exception to the far-right surge in Europe is clearly
over,” said João Cancela, a professor of political science at NOVA University
in Lisbon. Even though Mr. Ventura was set to lose, Professor Cancela said, his
strong showing illustrated that Chega now had geographic reach across a country
that in recent years has become a booming tourist destination, flush with
foreign investment, expatriates and a growing economy.
But with
those benefits came drawbacks and grievances, including concerns about housing
and the cost of living, that have fed Mr. Ventura’s rise. “This election confirms a structural shift
rather than a temporary blip,” Professor Cancela said.
Portugal
is now feeling the same nationalist current moving much of Europe. Italy is
governed by the Giorgia Meloni, whose career was forged in post-fascist
parties. The National Rally, France’s main far-right party, has gone from an
outcast to the front-runner in next year’s presidential elections. In Germany,
the far-right Alternative for Germany party is neck-and-neck in the polls with
the country’s center-right. Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K. party is now a serious
contender in Britain.
In the
days before the voting, deadly storms and floods disrupted the campaign and
postponed voting in a small minority of regions, though not to an extent likely
to influence the outcome. The presidency is traditionally a ceremonial role,
though it can veto laws and is imbued with special powers during political
crises, such as dissolving parliament. In the campaign to succeed the outgoing
president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Mr. Seguro said he wouldn’t overstep into
the territory of “shadow prime minister,” while Mr. Ventura had a more
expansionist view, promising an “interventionist presidency.”
Nationalists
and their opponents across the Continent looked to Sunday’s election as yet
another bellwether for populism’s strength. Chega is the first hard-right party
to surge so strongly in Portugal since the end of the nationalist dictatorship
of António de Oliveira Salazar.
Just six
years ago, in 2019, Mr. Ventura, a former soccer commentator, became Chega’s
first member of parliament. Since then, the party has grown on the oxygen of
social media outrage and anti-immigrant, anti-Roma and anti-corruption
sentiment to become the country’s leading opposition force.
Chega’s
support has increased especially among young Portuguese and those who are
suffering financially. Its message has made inroads into formerly left-wing
strongholds where working class voters, frustrated with housing prices and
shortages, sparse jobs and increased immigration, have sought a candidate who
directly speaks to their concerns.
Chega’s
political posters during the first round of the election declared “Isto não é o
Bangladesh!” or “This is not Bangladesh.” For many Chega voters, Bangladeshis
have become a shorthand for the doubling of the migrant population in Portugal
in the last decade.
Like in
France in recent elections, the Portuguese establishment has tried to build a
firewall against the far right by banding together across ideological lines to
appeal to moderate voters.
Self-declared
“nonsocialist” figures, including leading center-right conservatives, signed an
open letter backing Mr. Seguro, arguing that the election amounted to a fork in
the road between liberal and illiberal forces, and that Mr. Ventura’s candidacy
was beyond the democratic pale. The country’s leading conservatives, including
the former president and prime minister, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, spoke out against
Mr. Ventura.
“The
country is sending a message that Portugal is a moderate country and that we
value democracy,” said Carlos Moedas, the center-right mayor of Lisbon, and
former European Union official, who said on Sunday that he voted for Mr.
Seguro.
A
landslide victory for Mr. Seguro, the mayor said, would owe much to the
country’s moderates, including center-right leaders like himself, rallying
around him and showing Europe a path forward against extremism.
Mr.
Moedas worried though that unhappy voters might continue to turn to Chega
precisely because a unified establishment had formed against the party,
allowing Mr. Ventura to vacuum up the disaffected vote.
Trying to
reach voters who seemed motivated only by anger was “the big question,” he
said. “It’s a world wide trend and I
hope we can stop it in Portugal at some point.”
The
country’s center-right Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, didn’t publicly endorse
a candidate, a decision that reflected how many now see Chega as a permanent
fixture of the Portuguese political landscape. Analysts said Mr. Montenegro
wanted to avoid alienating more conservative elements of his base and upsetting
Chega, whose support he may need to pass legislation in parliament.
Mr.
Ventura has complained about being “canceled” by the Portuguese establishment,
and said in a debate before the election that people with entrenched interests
were more motivated to vote against him than to vote for Mr. Seguro. It was a
critique that echoed Vice President JD Vance’s broadside against the European
establishment last year in Germany, when he urged Europe to stop blocking
populist, and once taboo, parties from entering the mainstream.
Carlos
Barragán contributed reporting from Madrid.
Jason
Horowitz is the Madrid bureau chief for The Times, covering Spain, Portugal and
the way people live throughout Europe.
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