Luis Montenegro on election night with his wife Carla Montenegro in Lisbon. Photo / Getty Images
Luis Montenegro on election night with his wife Carla Montenegro in Lisbon. Photo / Getty Images
Portugal‘s Democratic Alliance won the election but failed to secure a majority, with 32.7% of the vote.
Chega gained 22.6%, becoming a significant force, but Montenegro refused to ally with them.
Socialist leader Pedro Nuno Santos resigned after the party’s worst result, securing 23.4%.
Portugal‘s incumbent centre-right party won most seats in the country’s third general election in three years but again fell short of parliamentary majority while support for the far-right Chega party rose, an exit poll showed.
The outcome threatens to extend political instability in the Nato and European Union member amid global trade tensions and demands to increase defence spending.
Prime Minister Luis Montenegro’s Democratic Alliance (AD) is projected to win 29-34% of the vote, compared to 21-26% for the Socialist Party (PS), according to a poll for RTP public television.
That would give Montenegro between 85 and 96 seats in the 230-member parliament, short of the 116 required for a ruling majority.
The Chega (Enough) party was projected to win 20-24% of the vote, up from 18% in the last election in 2024, which would make it kingmaker.
But Montenegro, 52, a lawyer by profession, has refused any alliance with Chega, saying it is “unreliable” and “not suited to governing”.
University of Lisbon political scientist Marina Costa Lobo told AFP governing would not be easier after the election and that Chega was “the big winner of the night”.
Sunday’s election was triggered when Montenegro lost a parliamentary vote of confidence in March after less than a year in power.
He called the vote following allegations of conflicts of interest related to his family’s consultancy business, which has clients holding government contracts.
Montenegro denied any wrongdoing, saying he was not involved in the firm’s day-to-day operations.
Tighter immigration rules
The AD formed a minority government after the last election. It could pass a budget that raises pensions and public sector wages, and slashes income taxes for young people, because the PS abstained in key parliamentary votes.
But relations between the two parties soured after the confidence vote, and it is unclear if a weakened PS will allow the centre-right to govern this time.
Socialist leader Pedro Nuno Santos, a 48-year-old economist, had accused Montenegro of engineering the election “to avoid explaining himself” about the firm’s activities to a parliamentary enquiry.
He has vowed to continue pushing for an inquiry.
Chega leader Andre Ventura greets people and talks to media after he cast his vote to elect the new Prime Minister of Portugal at Lisbon. Photo / Getty Images
Meanwhile, Montenego has criticised the immigration policies of the last Socialist government, accusing it of leaving Portugal in “bedlam”.
Under the Socialists, Portugal became one of Europe’s most open countries for immigrants.
Between 2017 and 2024, the number of foreigners living in Portugal quadrupled, reaching about 15% of the total population.
Montenegro has since toughened immigration policy, and during the campaign his government announced the expulsion of some 18,000 irregular migrants, leading critics to accuse it of pandering to the far-right.
Tiago Manso, a 33-year-old economist, welcomed the government moves to cut taxes and restrict immigration, saying that the country’s struggling public services were unable to cope with the influx.
“If the country doesn‘t create new schools, new hospitals, it can‘t keep its doors open to everyone,” he told AFP after voting for the AD in Lisbon.
Like other far-right parties across Europe, Chega has tapped into hostility to immigration and concerns over crime.
The party has grown in every general election since it was founded in 2019 by Andre Ventura, a one-time trainee priest who became a television football commentator.
It won 1.3% of the vote in a general election in 2019 the year it was founded, giving it a seat in parliament - the first time a far-right party had won representation in Portugal‘s parliament since a coup in 1974 toppled a decades-long rightist dictatorship.
Chega became the third-largest force in parliament in the next general election in 2022 and quadrupled its parliamentary seats last year to 50, cementing its place in Portugal‘s political landscape.
