Portugal - 2022 - Election
Portugal, which includes the archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, is a constitutional semi-presidential representative democracy with a president, prime minister, and parliament elected in multiparty elections. Observers considered the national legislative elections in October 2019 to be free and fair.
Portugal has a minority government led by the country’s Socialist Party (PS), which has been backed by the two left-wing parties. But both leftist parties refused to support the Socialist government’s budget, triggering snap elections two years earlier than scheduled. Prime Minister António Costa's minority left-wing alliance had survived in office since 2015. The Communists appeared to have been convinced by waning poll numbers that they need a period in full-blown opposition to rebuild.
On 04 November 2021 Portugal's president announced plans to dissolve parliament and call a snap election on 30 January. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa cited the national assembly's rejection of the government's draft budget for 2022 - the first such occurrence in decades.An opinion poll by Aximage pollsters released earlier in the day showed that 54 percent of 803 respondents thought a snap election would be “bad for the country”, with 68 percent believing that no party would win a majority of seats in the parliament, known as the Assembly of the Republic.
A ballot would elect to parliament 230 legislators, who then propose who forms a government. Given the procedural requirements, a new state budget proposal may not come before parliament until April 2022. Support for the centre-left Socialists is little changed from the 36 percent they won in the last national election in 2019, with the center-right Social Democrats in second at about 27 percent. The only party that stands to clearly benefit from the election is the far-right Chega that could emerge as the third-strongest force in parliament, but had been viewed by political analysts as too toxic a potential partner for any other party.
Portugal’s two main parties continue to capture about 75 percent of the country’s support. So the central block of Portuguese voters is not as stable as 20 years ago and there are signs of rising support for the extreme right. But that central block is still remaining stable.
No single party looks likely to secure a majority in Portugal’s snap general elections, but for one fast-rising political formation, the vote is already set to be a landmark success. After taking just one seat in the 2019 vote, current polls show the far-right Chega (Enough) party is poised to claim up to 10 times that in the elections.
A typically leader-centric far-right party, Chega is attempting to bring two main issues to Portugal’s political table. “One is the subsidy dependence of certain minority groups. Chega claims they are basically getting benefits from the state compared to the middle classes who are paying for them, and that only deserving people should receive them. The other is corruption, an important source of discontent in Portugal. José Sócrates, a former Prime Minister for the ruling Socialist party, faces a trial for corruption and several members of the government were part of the Socrates administration. So Chega attacks the government for a lack of renewal of the country’s political class.
Those fighting Chega’s progress should not underestimate current levels of political and social disaffection in certain sectors of Portuguese society. Chega thrives off semi-furtive nostalgia among certain senior citizens for the António de Oliveira Salazar dictatorship, by using a kind of forbidden speech for the Portuguese after the 1974 Revolution – which brought back democracy to the country – based on a kind of collective narcissism about the greatness of Portuguese people and in a way about the history of Portugal. Chega has even adopted one of Salazar’s best-known political rallying cries – “God, Country and Family” – for their 2022 manifesto, by just tacking two words, e Trabalho [and Work] at the end of the dictator’s slogan.
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