The Portuguese presidential election, explained
Can Ventura come first in a five-way toss-up?
Since the fall of the Estado Novo, every democratically-elected President of the Portuguese Republic has served exactly two terms, each holding the office for a decade. Whilst the constitution limits Presidents to one consecutive re-election bid, the fact that no President as yet has failed to succeed in that bid is a testament to the stability of Portugal’s political monoculture. The top candidates in each election have consistently emerged from the ranks of the Socialist Party (PS), the Social Democratic Party (PSD), or the now-declining Social Democratic Centre (CDS). Independent candidates, often looked upon favourably as neutral newcomers under the semi-presidential system, rarely manage to receive more than 20% of the vote, if they run at all. This political equilibrium was, until recently, also reflected in legislative elections, with the PSD and PS taking around two thirds of the seats in the Assembly of the Republic, and in the selection of Prime Ministers exclusively from those two parties.
The Third Portuguese Republic has sustained a left-of-centre course essentially without interruption for the last half century, a state of uncompetitive democracy comparable only to Japan’s Jimintō uniparty. Yet readers who have recently looked out of the window will recognise that we no longer live in ordinary or predictable times. Founded in 2019, André Ventura’s Chega managed to snatch a second-place finish in the May 2025 snap legislative elections with the late votes of the disgruntled Portuguese diaspora, becoming the main opposition party in Portugal. This Sunday, 18th January, in a rare occurrence for a Portuguese national election, a 5-horse race is expected to take place to elect a new President. A second round run-off, scheduled for the 8th February, is therefore likely for the first time in 40 years.
Portugal’s rapid rejection of its political establishment is reflective of the overall trend across Europe, and is rooted in many of the same frustrations: well-defined procedural outcomes in the legislative and judicial branches, a half-hearted ‘soft power’ foreign policy, a legislative agenda downstream from Brussels and a hard embrace of ever-growing immigration especially since the late 2010s, pushing down wages which were already stagnant in the 2000s.
The source of these issues, a complacent and self-centred public sector, became apparent to many during the COVID years. The institutional parties got tied down attempting to reframe old formulas, leaving ample room for new parties with new unconventional ideas to emerge, overwhelmingly supported by the youth, the disengaged and the discontent. In a fitting metaphor for the body politic, the 77-year old head of state Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has been unable to perform his usual duties in the last months of his Presidency due to various health complications stemming from his old age.
The Candidates and the Parties
The most notable fact about the five contenders for the Presidency as a group is that only one of them has declared himself to be firmly on the Left. This fact alone, whatever the outcome of the five-way toss-up may be, is the best evidence for a broad rejection of Portugal’s omnipresent redistributionist discourse in a country that embedded explicitly Marxist terminology into its constitution half a century ago. Indeed, ‘Socialist’ has become a common pejorative which the various centrist and right-wing parties now throw around at each other on the campaign trail, most notably in the critiques made by upstart Liberal Initiative (IL) against Chega’s economic proposals.
According to the polls, each of the five candidates are set to receive anywhere between 16% and 24% on Sunday, with no definitive leader of the pack. Neither of the candidates from the two institutional parties (PSD and PS) are guaranteed to make it to the second round. Let’s take a look at these five candidates, and the parties that back them.
Luís Marques Mendes, Social Democratic Party (PSD)
The PSD was founded in 1974, in the aftermath of the Carnation Revolution. It represented the right of that revolution, but as its name suggests would in any other country have been understood as a centre-left party. Over time, it has drifted rightwards as Portuguese politics underwent limited normalisation and the memory of the Estado Novo faded, and became a more classic Christian democratic force — yet it remained solidly to the left of equivalents in other countries. As president he would seem to be, like his predecessor, another ‘ribbon-cutter’ (corta-fitas, that is, a ceremonial role).
In 2026, the PSD is the incumbent party of government, with party President Luis Montenegro serving as Prime Minister. Their candidate for President of the Republic is a rather weak one. Marques Mendes has had a long career as a high-ranking public servant and a party insider, though his recent spell as a TV pundit shows the desire from PSD to secure their voter base with a familiar face from the favoured medium for the older generations, following on the steps of the current president Rebelo de Sousa. As President, one expects he would follow in the stylistic footsteps of his predecessor and perform a largely symbolic ribbon-cutter role.
PSD remains in a strong position to advance its legislative agenda as the largest party in the Assembly, sitting ideologically between its main competitors (Chega and PS). A victory for Mendes, then, would mean minimal disruption to the government’s current path, and little change for Portugal.
Antonio José Seguro, Socialist Party (PS)
The Socialist’s Seguro is a well-respected figure across the political spectrum, known primarily for his struggle with the EU’s troika during the worst years of the Great Recession. He is therefore a much-needed asset for the declining left-wing following their failure to concoct a grand ‘republican coalition’ with the minor far-left parties for the Presidential election. Paradoxically, despite Seguro’s personal standing, the lack of broader endorsements for the PS compared to previous elections and the debilitated position of the trade unions in Portugal (historically stronger than in most European countries and a key voter-base for the PS) mean Seguro could deliver the party’s worst ever election results this Sunday.
André Ventura, Enough! (Chega)
Ventura’s political machine has expressed all the expected features of a European right-populist party since its founding in 2019, but not in the usual anti-establishment tone. A PSD member since coming of age, Ventura left the party after a leadership contest in 2019, which saw the party reject a turn to the right (and thereby eschew much of the platform later advocated by Ventura himself). As a result, Ventura is positioned as less of an outsider than leaders of other populist parties in Europe. The benefit of this is that he has a far greater understanding of political procedures and party structures.
Combined with a perhaps instinctive understanding of how to deploy populist rhetoric to build a strong political identity, this gives Ventura a unique combination of skills. Thus, his constant attacks on the mainstream media, institutional corruption, bipartisan hypocrisy, open-borders and, in a rather cartoonish but entirely legitimate feud, the gypsy community, remain grounded in legality and the constitutional framework. His style is combative, but not nihilistic, and his openness about his Catholic beliefs comes across as honest if somewhat anachronistic.
Chega is omnipresent in Portuguese political culture both online, where it finds great support among the youth, and in the streets, where it maintains an energetic activist base and strong visibility through the displaying of tens of thousands of posters and billboards across the country, from the deepest countryside to the great avenues of Lisbon, and even right outside the Communist Party’s HQ.
Like in previous campaigns, it is their bread-and-butter direct messaging which generates the most support, often grounded in issues of social and economic welfare, with themes that will no doubt be familiar to most readers (‘immigrants cannot live off of subsidies’; ‘put the Portuguese first’; ‘50 years of corruption, it is time to say enough!’). When a court demanded the dismantling of some billboards for featuring ‘discriminatory language’ (‘the gypsies must obey the law’), Chega was quick to comply, but equally quick to put them back up with only minor changes in language.
A cordon sanitaire around Chega has never officially been established, and it is regarded by other parties more similarly to the way in which Reform is seen in Britain than the AfD in Germany, or even the RN in France. Ventura’s momentum and loyal party base (which has so far looked away from the various embezzlement investigations against his party) mean he is currently polling first for Sunday’s election in roughly half of polls, though winning in the second round would be an uphill battle at best regardless of who makes it through with him.
Henrique Gouveia e Melo, Independent
Admiral Henrique Gouveia e Melo, an independent candidate endorsed by the Monarchist Party, is the true dark horse of this race, having started his first political campaign only six months ago at the age of 64. A former Chief of Staff of the Portuguese Navy, he came to prominence as the leader of the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out in 2021. He was born in Portuguese Mozambique, and comes from an aristocratic family with roots in the rural northeast of Portugal.
Rumours of a possible Presidential run have abounded for several years, although Gouveia e Melo himself had previously sought to dispel them. Despite what might be assumed of a senior military official seeking high office as an independent, Gouveia e Melo describes himself as a ‘pragmatic centrist’ and a defender of liberal democracy. His candidacy is therefore a classic Macron-esque attempt to divert anti-establishment energies back towards establishment political ideas.
Early polling from summer 2025 put Gouveia e Melo in the lead, with an astonishing 40% of the vote, but he has since bled support and now sits consistently behind Ventura, Seguro, and Cotrim de Figueredo.
João Cotrim de Figueredo, Liberal Initiative (IL)
Cotrim de Figeredo is a prominent businessman who has served in executive roles in major companies in both the food and beverage industry and, later, at TVI, one of Portugal’s largest TV channels. As a student in London, he worked as a cocktail waiter at the Serpentine Galleries. Previously regarded as the least likely candidate to go through to the second round, but now polling neck-and-neck with leaders Ventura and Seguro, he is expected to double or triple the party’s vote share from the last Presidential election this Sunday on his unapologetic pro-growth platform.
As media personalities and interviewers somewhat reluctantly admit, Cotrim de Figueredo is perhaps the most good-humoured and likeable candidate in the race, and is the only one of the five main contenders to have made a career outside of the public sector before entering politics. A relatively young party, the D’Hondt voting system has thus far relegated IL to a minor parliamentary party, albeit with some tangible influence over local and regional politics especially in the big cities. Whenever a passport-bro complains on X about the unfriendly business environment of Lisbon or Portugal as a whole, IL’s councillors or one of their MPs can usually be relied upon to drop by in the replies asking for feedback on how to remedy their situation.
Unlike Chega, it is hard to assess whether their liberal platform, based on a pro-EU and pro-Ukraine messaging, will remain attractive for potential voters into the future. There is certainly a business-oriented base which would welcome a shift to a more economically liberal politics, and the mass disillusionment of the youth with Portugal’s socialist model presents an opportunity for liberals — but angry young men tend to like their anti-socialism tinged with a hint of nationalism, and have an understandable aversion to the leadership of ‘sensible’ business elites. 2000 miles from Kiev, in the poorest country west of the former iron curtain, it is not clear whence a stable coalition for a politics which combines domestic reform with international continuity will come.
First round: 18th January; second round: 8th February
The diminished appeal of the PS, as well as the Communist and New Left parties, makes a draining of votes to a left-wing candidate in the second round unlikely. The cumulative polling of the nominally left and far-left candidates barely scratches 25% as things stand. A pivot to the right, much anticipated following the 2025 legislative elections, is inevitable. However, under Portugal’s run-off electoral system, moderate candidates are favoured.
Ventura, for his part, is poised for a complicated reformulation of his agenda within the tight three-week campaign for the second round of the election, shoring up the base to secure victory in the first before expanding his appeal in the second. He has loudly declared his intention ‘to fight in both election rounds to show the people that it is necessary to change the political system, that it is necessary to give a knock on the table against everything that is going on’. Nevertheless, he remains well behind in every head-to-head. A generational political shift, anticipated in France as Bardella claims pole position in polls for 2027, is likely out of the picture in Portugal for this electoral cycle.
Absent a victory in the first round from either of the two main institutional candidates, Gouveia e Melo would seem like an easy, sensible call for the victor in the second round. A retornado born in Mozambique from a highborn family and a respected member of the armed forces, he represents the last breath of the ancient seafaring aristocracy, going out of his way to position himself as a ‘supra-partisan candidate’. Unlike post-Salazar presidents Cavaco Silva, Ramalho Eanes and da Costa Gomes who served in the colonial wars, Gouveia e Melo has made his 45-year-long military career exclusively in peacetime, devaluing his otherwise good credentials in management and long-distance logistics, whilst his rather poor performances on the debates and an unexpected probe into Navy contracts will make it harder to find endorsements from other parties come February. Regardless of the winner, the President’s office is expected to slowly return to a more active role, overseeing solutions to the nation’s issues, as intended in the 1976 Constitution.
Immigration, though a topic of concern for Portuguese citizens, largely remains a prominent political issue only in relation to crime, enforcement of deportation rulings, and integration, mostly localized within Lisbon and Porto, and less important for the Portuguese when compared to housing and corruption. For a frame of reference, out of the former colonial powers partaking in the Berlin Conference, Portugal consistently ranks at the bottom in both nominal GDP and state budget. The citizens of Brazil, Mozambique or Cape Verde have a more detached relation to the former metropolis, with many thinking twice on whether or not it is worth leaving their homes and leaving for Portugal rather than the US or other European countries with larger social welfare schemes. Many of those that do come to Portugal use it as an easy entry point to Europe, only to move on to other countries having secured residency.
On this matter, a distinction is to be made between two recent pieces of legislation: the law of nationality (Lei de Nacionalidade), last modified in March 2024, days before Chega quadrupled their number of MPs on a legislative election, which still gives an easier route for ‘community of Portuguese language countries’ (CPLP) citizens and grants some of the loosest citizenship requirements in Europe, second only to their Iberian neighbours in Spain; and the revised law for foreigners and residence in Portugal (Lei de Estrangeiros) passed a few months ago with support from Chega. Whilst these changes represent some minor improvements on what came before, immigration policy in Portugal remains well behind where we might like to see it.
Constitutional reforms on these and other areas would require a favourable two thirds majority on the Assembly, yet for a more long-term structural reform of the Portuguese state it may be preferable to gain control of the Presidency, which grants veto powers for most laws passed by the Assembly. The elected President could also, theoretically, dissolve the Assembly and call for snap elections until his own party is in an advantageous position to legislate. Ventura, pushing for a reformist and active role for the head of state throughout the campaign, like Ramalho Eanes in the past, claimed in a recent interview that he has no intention of doing this were he to win on the second round. It is nevertheless hard to imagine that a President Ventura would resist the opportunity if polling showed Chega in the lead during his term.
Further down the road
Beyond the current rightwards shift in Portugal, which remains within the constitutional bounds that have existed since 1974, can we expect bigger changes as seen in the previous century? The Portuguese state, despite decades of parliamentary slumber, does sometimes show signs of activity on the world stage. For instance, after joining the EU, the Banco de Portugal enacted various monetary treaties with Portugal’s best performing African ex-colonies (Cape Verde and São Tomé e Príncipe) to peg their currencies to the Euro, in a similar arrangement to France’s CFA Franc. On their own, these agreements mean very little, but they are testament to an enduring resistance (however limited) within Portugal’s political culture to the slow transition towards national abolition.
As other countries tread the path of national renewal and the revision of constitutional settlements, it will be interesting to see where the newly unleashed political currents in Portugal might head. Indeed, the country best positioned for radical change is France if current polling is to be believed. Historically Francophile, Portugal may well look towards that example in the coming years, following the cultural and political lead of the republic on which its constitution was originally modelled and where three million ethnic Portuguese now live.
This is a more likely path for the Portuguese right than that of Missão, a Brazilian young right party which has garnered much attention among the online right for its embrace of the language of Meritocracy and the aesthetics of Bukelism. Brazil being a fellow Lusophone country, some have suggested that Portugal would be a natural destination for the spread of this sort of movement. A Portuguese branch has indeed been established, but has yet to garner any significant support even compared to its performance in Brazil.
Yet, as with most former colonial metropoles on the continent, both the political class and the voters in Portugal still tend to look down on forms and ideas spawned in the Americas, at least outside of corporate practice and restaurant menus. Brazilians, in turn, will struggle to influence discourse in Portugal especially among the nationalistically-minded right so long as they continue to label their motherland and host country with such uncomplimentary nicknames as ‘Pernambuco em pé’ or ‘Guiana Brasileira’.
Perhaps Missão will get the 7,500 signatures needed to officially form a political party in Portugal, and go on to take advantage of the Brazilian diaspora in the country — but it is much more likely that either the PSD or Chega will emerge having embraced a fusion of the most salient right-wing issues over the next few electoral cycles as the standard-bearer of the Portuguese right. Portugal remains a much older society than Brazil, and Missão is explicitly a youth-oriented movement. It represents a tone of politics — radically reformist, yet positive and future-oriented — which is easier to land in a country that is seeking to achieve prosperity for the first time, rather than a country which feels it has lost glories it once held. Despite these factors, Chega has been more generous to its youth supporters than comparable European parties, with four MPs being members of its youth wing. Given these factors, it is unsurprising that the party retains deep support among the young, and it is unlikely that an explicitly generational force will emerge as a significant factor in Portuguese politics.
This article was written by Suevi Man, a Pimlico Journal contributor from Spain. Have a pitch? Send it to pimlicojournal@substack.com.
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