The right won the elections in Portugal

The center-right electoral coalition won Sunday's snap elections in Portugal, with the ruling Socialists currently vying for second place.

The early vote was necessary because socialist Antonia Costa, who has been leading the country as prime minister since 2015, is suspected of corruption, and similar accusations had previously been made against several members of her government, because of which the prime minister decided to resign last time. November.

Based on well-known public opinion polls before the vote, they expected a right-wing government to be formed again after 9 years, but these measurements were also wrong two years ago: they underestimated the Socialists, for example, by at least 5 percent, who were ultimately able To celebrate a historic victory. Current measurements indicate that the ruling leftist party obtained a percentage of between 27 and 28 percent, and the opposition center-right electoral coalition expected a result of between 32 and 33 percent, while the far-right Chega Party expected it to obtain 16 percent.

With 85% of the votes counted, the centre-right Electoral Alliance has received the largest number of votes, currently at 32%, while the ruling Socialists currently stand at 29%. On the other hand, the new right-wing Chiga party performed much better, receiving 19% of the votes, meaning they achieved three times better results than they did two years ago. The only problem is that the leader of the center-right PSD party, Luis Montenegro, does not want to govern with Chega.

Forming a government will not be easy either, as the President of Portugal announced at the beginning of the election campaign, He will do his best to keep Chega away from the plow. Free elections have been held in the smaller nation on the Iberian Peninsula since the mid-1970s, when the right-wing regime of Salazar, or as the Portuguese called him Estado Novo, fell. The so-called April 1974 Clove revolution Since then, two dominant parties have essentially controlled the internal politics of the Portuguese; The Portuguese Socialist Party (PS), a traditionally left-wing mass party, and the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which, despite its name, is a centre-right centrist party.

In the European Parliament, the former is a member of the S&D faction, which unites the socialist parties, where former MSZP representatives István Újhelyi and four DK EP representatives also play politics on the Hungarian side. The Social Democratic Party is a member of the European People's Party, to which Fidesz also belonged for a long time. The two main parties have ruled the country in a grand coalition on several occasions, which was necessary because it is not easy to obtain an absolute majority in parliament in a regional electoral system similar to the Spanish system, as is the case in the Hungarian system for example. Or British electoral systems.

For Hungarian readers, the name may sound familiar: José Manuel Barroso, who was Prime Minister of the center-right PSD party in the years after the turn of the millennium and, after our country joined the European Union, became President of the Social Democratic (centre-right) European Commission until 2014.

In addition to the two main parties, smaller left-wing parties (such as the historical Communist Party) and then green parties were able to win seats in parliament, as well as occasional right-wing parties that emerged on the scene, until the advent of the new regime. When the right-wing Chiga (Enough!) entered parliament in 2019, there was no real far-right party in the country. One reason for this is that Portugal, like Spain, broke away from right-wing authoritarianism and built a multiparty system starting in the 1970s, and in both countries, today's new right-wing formations were created by secession from the dominant center-right party.

Spanish Vox campaigned strongly for Chega in the current campaignAlthough both parties are active in the Identity faction, The Hungarian government had hitherto established closer relations with the Spaniards. Following the current Chiga result, and three months before the European Parliament elections, this has become an inevitable factor within the European right-wing radical scene.

For readers trained in the climate of Hungarian domestic politics, there has been an interesting development in the just-concluded Portuguese election campaign. Even in a southern European country of similar size and roughly the same population as Hungary Paid political advertising is prohibited On social media, outside of the campaign period. Early voting was preceded by a short official campaign period of only two weeks, so the parties did not carry out meaningful campaign activities on Facebook, as well as on YouTube, thus avoiding Portuguese society.