Portugal's ruling Socialists win surprise victory in snap poll
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Loading... - Kathy Grant
- 31 Jan 2022
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Portugal’s centre-left Socialists have won an outright parliamentary majority in Sunday’s snap election, securing a strong new mandate for Prime Minister Antonio Costa as the country prepares to deploy billions of dollars in European Union aid in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The result, boosted by a higher than expected turnout despite the coronavirus pandemic, came as a surprise after the Socialists had lost much of their lead in recent opinion polls.
In a ballot that took place amid a surge of coronavirus cases blamed on the Omicron variant, and with about one million people with COVID-19 allowed to leave home to cast their ballots, the Socialists took 117 seats in the 230-seat parliament, up from 108 in the outgoing assembly.
“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,” Costa said in his victory speech.
Before the final results came in, Costa said the party had won 117 or 118 seats in the 230-seat parliament, up from 108 in the 2019 election, and his supporters erupted in loud celebrations, singing the old revolutionary anthem “Grandola” and waving flags.
The vote was called in November after Costa’s former hard-left Communist and Left Bloc allies joined the right to defeat his minority government’s budget.
The two far-left parties paid the price, losing more than a half of their seats, according to exit polls.
The centre-right Social Democrats were at a distant second with 71 seats, while the far-right Chega emerged as the third-largest parliamentary force, taking 12 seats in parliament from just one in the previous legislature.
Four seats still need to be attributed in the coming days with the results of votes cast abroad, but in 2019 the Socialists obtained two of those. Read More…
