António José Seguro, a former head of Portugal’s Socialist Party, is projected to have secured a surprise victory in the first round of the country’s presidential election, according to exit polls released Sunday evening.
Expected to win 30 percent to 35 percent of the total votes cast, Seguro’s projected triumph would be an unforeseen upset for André Ventura, leader of the far-right Chega party. Pre-election surveys had consistently shown him enjoying the strongest support among eligible voters.
As none of the candidates secured an absolute majority, Seguro faces a runoff election Feb. 8 against the second-place finisher. Exit polls conducted by the Catholic University of Portugal had Ventura in second receiving 20 percent to 24 percent of the vote, narrowly ahead of European Parliament lawmaker João Cotrim de Figueiredo, who is seen as gaining between 17 percent and 21 percent.
Regardless of whether he makes it to next month’s runoff, Ventura’s ability to secure nearly a quarter of the ballots Sunday emphasizes how remarkable his Chega party’s growth has been in Portugal. In six years the ultranationalist grouping has gone from having just one lawmaker in parliament to becoming the country’s leading opposition party, controlling more than a quarter of seats in the country’s legislature.
Cotrim de Figueiredo’s performance is also notable. Earlier this week the politician, who leads the Liberal Initiative, a liberal economic party, and is vice-president of the Renew Group in the European Parliament, called an emergency press conference after a former advisor said she had filed a sexual harassment complaint against him in 2023. The lawmaker denied the accusations, which he dismissed as “dirty campaign” tactics, and appeared to retain the backing of voters.
Portugal is a semi-presidential republic in which the president serves as the country’s head of state and has the power to appoint the prime minister and dissolve parliament.
The president also has the right to veto laws, ratify international treaties, appoint some members of key state and judicial bodies, and issue pardons. Moreover, as supreme commander of the country’s armed forces, the president wields significant influence on Portuguese military deployments.
Law professor Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has dominated the presidency for the past decade. Despite being the son of a minister in the 20th century administration of dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, Rebelo de Sousa helped write the country’s democratic constitution and tapped that knowledge to compose exhaustive commentaries on government legislation. He was also renowned for his seemingly boundless energy and his willingness to take selfies with members of the public.
Although 14 candidates vied to succeed Rebelo de Sousa, three were disqualified for lacking the required number of signatures to run for the presidency. In addition to Seguro, Ventura and Cotrim de Figueiredo, conservative TV commentator Luís Marques Mendes and Admiral Henrique Gouveia e Melo, a naval officer who oversaw the successful rollout of the Covid vaccine in Portugal, were among the top contenders.
While Ventura performed strongly on Sunday, few believe he has a real shot at winning if he qualifies for the runoff vote. Political watchers expect the public to mobilize to prevent him from capturing the presidential palace and to rally round Seguro on Feb. 8. But that may not matter to Ventura, who said he has no real interest in being “the president of all Portuguese people” and has hinted he was only running to gauge support for his eventual candidacy for prime minister.
This year’s presidential election is the sixth major vote held in Portugal since 2024, including three national elections, a European Parliament vote, and nationwide municipal elections. Remarkably, voter fatigue doesn’t seem to be a significant factor: Whereas 60 percent of voters declined to cast ballots when presidential elections were last held in 2021, exit polls suggest abstention rates fell to a 20-year low on Sunday, with around 40 percent of registered voters participating.
