Welcome to a land where all parties are socialist: a Portuguese politics thread

[The Larch]

Results from the Portuguese parlamentary elections are in, and the Socialists seem to have won an absolute majority.

Portugal general election: Socialists win surprise outright majority
Prime minister António Costa says parliamentary victory 'doesn't mean absolute power' but he will no longer need to negotiate to form a coalition

Defying all odds, Portugal's ruling centre-left Socialists won an outright parliamentary majority in Sunday's snap general election, securing a strong new mandate for the prime minister, Antonio Costa.

The result, boosted by a higher than expected turnout despite the coronavirus pandemic, came as a surprise after the Socialists had lost most of their advantage in recent opinion polls. It means Portugal will have a stable government to oversee the application of EU pandemic recovery funds.

Costa said in his victory speech early on Monday: "An absolute majority doesn't mean absolute power. It doesn't mean to govern alone. It's an increased responsibility and it means to govern with and for all Portuguese."

Just after 1am in Lisbon, the Socialists were confirmed as winning 117 seats in the 230-seat parliament, up from 108 won in the 2019 election. Earlier, when Costa said the party had won 117 or 118 seats, his supporters erupted in loud celebrations, singing the old revolutionary anthem "Grandola" and waving flags.

After last week's opinion polls Costa himself acknowledged that Portuguese did not want to give him a full majority and said he was prepared to strike alliances with like-minded parties, which is now no longer necessary.

Sunday's election was triggered in December after the long-running deal between Costa's minority government and its allies in the Portuguese Communist party and the Left Bloc broke down during negotiations over the 2022 budget.

The unlikely alliance – known as the geringonça, or improvised solution – finally collapsed when the Communists and Left Bloc joined rightwing parties in rejecting the budget bill after weeks of tense negotiations.

Costa, who has served as prime minister since 2015, had accused his erstwhile geringonça partners of behaving irresponsibly by voting against his budget.

Despite the seemingly unstable nature of his minority government, Costa has won plaudits for turning around Portugal's post-crisis economy, reversing unpopular austerity measures and overseeing one of the most successful Covid vaccination programmes in Europe.

"Everyone is realising how important this election is, and how important it is that there's a solid victory that will give the country stability and generate the consensus and national unity that is fundamental for us to turn the page on this pandemic," Costa told a rally in Porto on Friday.

Recent polls had suggested that the PSD were creeping ahead of the Socialists and that the race would be a narrow one.

Economist Filipe Garcia, the head of consultants Informacao de Mercados Financeiros in Porto, said investors were likely to appreciate Costa's new strong mandate, given the government's record cutting of the budget deficit.

"Furthermore, the Socialists will not need to compromise [with other parties], which guarantees stability and a clear line of action. The biggest challenge will be to promote potential growth," he said.

The centre-right Social Democrats came a distant second at below 30% of the vote, according to provisional results, against the Socialists' tally of around 42%.

The far-right Chega emerged as the third-largest parliamentary force, making a big leap from just one seat in the previous legislature to at least 11.

A stable government would bode well for Portugal's access to a €16.6bn ($18.7bn) package of EU pandemic recovery aid and its success in channelling funds into projects to boost economic growth.

With more than a tenth of Portugal's 10 million people estimated to be isolating because of Covid-19, the government had allowed infected people to leave isolation and cast ballots in person, and electoral officials wore protection suits in the afternoon to receive them.

Turnout was on track to beat 2019's record low participation of 49%.

As in many European countries, infections have spiked, although vaccination has kept deaths and hospitalisations lower than in earlier waves.

PS (Ruling socialists) got 117 seats.
PSD (Opposition soc-dems) got 76 seats.
Chega (relative newcoming far-right) got 12 seats.
Liberals got 10 seats
Commies got 6 seats.
BE (Left Bloc) got 5 seats.
Other parties split the remaining 4 seats.

All in all it seems to have been a massive victory for the ruling Socialists and the current PM Antonio Costa, who now will be able to govern on their own (albeit with a really slim margin), without having to deal with a new "geringonça". It's also quite a bollocking to their former junior coalition partners (Commies and Bloco de Esquerda), who loose a massive amount of seats and are consigned to irrelevancy. The Portuguese voters don't seem to have taken lightly the "betrayal" of those parties when siding with the opposition in december, making the budget fail and triggering the elections.

Other relative winners are Chega, the newest member of the far right/right wing populist party family, that goes from having just one MP to being the 3rd party in number of seats with 12. The Liberals also jump from just one seat to 4th party with 10 seats.

[Duque de Bragança]

Leftists doing their best useful idiot act for the PS had it coming, to be honest.  Serves them well.

Still, it's quite a surprise a PS burdened with rising taxes, corruption scandals, incompetent ministers, not only winning but getting an absolute majority  PS did its best, as always, to curtail the expat/emigrant vote by setting an even more dysfunctional than usual system mail voting system, and refusing to let vote in consulates (actively discouraging registration for those who want so). In theory a registered shipping gets you a notice to pick it up to the local post office but nothing of the sort so the mail went immediately back to Portugal.  to prevent from voting.
I got lucky since the mail ballot got to my former place (who signed it for me?) but my mother did not.

It's surprising for the PSD which did a good campaign, not a given for the oft-criticised leader Rui Rio, by Pinto da Costa F.C Porto president  (he pointed out the PS has never been higher in ballots than during Rio's tenure). More surprisingly, the pre-election polls were quite good for the PSD. 

Scattering votes on the centre-right/right with Chega (right of conservatives led by a former PSD type) and Iniciativa Liberal (classic liberals) probably played a part where the race was tight between the PS and PSD I guess.
The historical conservative party, CDS-PP, roughly CDU-light (pre-Merkel) got wiped out and has no seat in the assembly for the first time since the April '74 Revolution.

[Duque de Bragança]

Bonus:

Also sprach Rui Rio, leader of PSD, which lost, when asked again by a journo if he would resign, after stating that he could see himself useful anymore to the PSD, so implying he would resign.

https://youtu.be/-73qfj2k7h4?t=30

PS(no pun intended): I'll spare you the dumb YT user comments.

[Valmy]

The socialist party must be feeling pretty good beating those other socialist parties....plus those far right guys (who are probably also socialists, just hate foreigners) I guess.

[Sheilbh]

Costa is low-key one of the most successful democratic politicians in Europe and no-one seems to notice, care or try to find any lessons

[Valmy]

Costa is low-key one of the most successful democratic politicians in Europe and no-one seems to notice, care or try to find any lessons

Portugal is a tiny country that usually barely shows up on anybody's radar besides that time they inexplicably became a global super power.

[Sheilbh]

Portugal is a tiny country that usually barely shows up on anybody's radar besides that time they inexplicably became a global super power.

It's not that tiny in comparison with the rest of the countries in Europe

And it doesn't stop Europeans talking about lessons from Biden for Scholz, say, which is just as crazily different.

[The Larch]

Costa is low-key one of the most successful democratic politicians in Europe and no-one seems to notice, care or try to find any lessons

Over here PSOE are really trying, but it runs absolutely against the Spanish nature of completely forgetting that Portugal even exists. 

Now seriously, Sánchez and Costa seem to have a relatively good understanding and are in a common front in most topics at EU level, and I wouldn't rule out that PSOE's decision to join in a coalition government with Podemos might have been helped by the Portuguese example with their "geringonça" governments. Also, Podemos seems to also be studying the situation heavily, as they're in the same situation than the junior parties in the Portuguese coalitions, and are also learning from their mistakes (I doubt that Podemos will ever do what the Portuguese parties did and vote with the opposition against the government's budget).

Mind you, Costa is indeed really successful, but Portugal is a country that still has tons of issues.

[Sheilbh]

Over here PSOE are really trying, but it runs absolutely against the Spanish nature of completely forgetting that Portugal even exists. 

Like how everyone in the UK is studiously ignoring that the most successful and popular leader of a political party here is the First Minister of Wales and Leader of Welsh Labour.

Mind you, Costa is indeed really successful, but Portugal is a country that still has tons of issues.

Of course - all countries have lots of issues but if you don't win then the other lot get to try and solve them. Normally by going in the oppopsite direction to what you'd want. And Costa's record at winning especially for someone who first won during the tail-end of the worst impacts of the Eurozone crisis is pretty impressive.

[Duque de Bragança]

Mind you, Costa is indeed really successful in getting elected (not the first time though but combinazione helped), but Portugal is a country that still has tons of issues.

Fixed!

[Duque de Bragança]

The socialist party must be feeling pretty good beating those other socialist parties....plus those far right guys (who are probably also socialists, just hate foreigners) I guess.

The Iniciativa Liberal guys disagree, and just sent a sternly worded post on LinkedIn.