Bad weather does not stop a historic participation in Portugal, which shoots up six points compared to the 2022 data

Luis Ángel SanzSpecial envoy Lisbon

Special Envoy Lisbon

Updated Sunday, March 10, 2024-18:41

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Historical participation in Portugal.

The citizens of the Portuguese country are flocking to the polling stations.

With official data from 4:00 p.m., electoral participation now amounts to

51.96%

, six points more than at the same time of the previous elections in 2022.

The bad weather in much of the country, with rain and strong wind, has not stopped Portuguese voters, who are sometimes having to wait in long lines to vote.

At 4:00 p.m. this Sunday, March 10, more citizens have already voted than in the entire election day two years ago, although the polls close at 7:00 p.m. on the peninsula (one hour later in the Azores and Madeira, for the schedule change).

No one wants to guess yet who will benefit from high participation.

But sources from the different headquarters of the Portuguese parties tell EL MUNDO that they believe that tonight the Portuguese

can vote for "change" after eight years of socialist governments

.

The main political leaders have called for participation when they voted in the morning.

The still Prime Minister, the socialist

António Costa

, who voted in Benfica, has joked about his departure from the front line:

"I am leaving playing on the field, to go to the stands as another fan

. "

Its candidate, the former minister and now leader of the Socialist Party (PS),

Pedro Nuno Santos

, has asked all Portuguese to vote "on a day of great hope, to continue moving forward without taking steps back", in reference to a possible Conservative government, to which the polls point.

The Democratic Alliance (AD) candidate,

Luís Montenegro

, voted in Espinho (North) and appeared "very calm", but also "very optimistic".

Finally, the populist

André Ventura

, leader of the radical Chega formation, which may surprise this Sunday, has asked that "no one stay at home."

The hard-right deputy has emphasized that this is "a day in which everyone, on an equal footing, has the strength and the right to change the country."

Costa's resignation

Portugal concludes with the elections on March 10 a long electoral campaign that opened in November

after the resignation of the prime minister

, the socialist

António Costa

, due to a corruption case that has finally been deflated by the judges.

In November and after his resignation, Costa proposed to the

President of the Republic

, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, that he appoint another prime minister from the Socialist Party (PS), since he had an absolute majority in the Assembly of the Republic.

But the head of state

preferred to call early elections

.

The last two weeks of the electoral campaign have been especially hard for the Socialist Party, which has gone in a few months from the absolute majority of 2022 to a sudden resignation of the prime minister and an unexpected change of leader.

Pedro Nuno Santos

(47 years old) was

elected general secretary and candidate in January

and, since then, he has traveled the country without time to take over the party.

Even so, socialist sources assure that the push and mobilization of the bases has been even greater than in the 2022 elections, especially due to the emergency situation and the possible loss of power that the socialists face.

Pedro Nuno Santos, leader of the Socialist Party. PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRAAFP

Pedro Nuno Santos wanted to take advantage of the economic achievements that his party, which has been at the head of the Government of Portugal since 2015, boasts: public debt has gone from being a headache for Europe to being reduced below 100% of GDP, inflation is controlled at around 2.5% and unemployment rates are below 7%.

Investment in health and education has been important, but both public services have significant deficits that have made citizen perception of them worse today than it was a few years ago.

The message of the campaign has been that we must vote for the PS to "move forward" and "not take steps backwards", thus stopping the arrival of the right, which the socialists warn that may be accompanied in the Lisbon Government by the " extreme right" by Chega.

Despite all this, the instability of the last Government with an absolute majority, which materialized in the resignation of two ministers and 11 secretaries of State, and that of Costa himself in November have weighed down the campaign of a candidate who is seen by broad sectors as

too impetuous and impulsive

.

During these months, Santos has carried over the image problems that he already had as minister before his resignation in 2022. His impulsive management of the important Infrastructure portfolio generated many internal problems with his boss, António Costa, which were transferred to public opinion. .

In fact,

Costa

- with whom he does not have a good relationship -

even publicly disavowed him

when the then minister unilaterally announced the

new location of the Lisbon airport

without consulting his boss .

The prime minister corrected him and kept him in his position, but forced him to put his project in a drawer.

Finally, Santos ended up resigning for granting compensation through a WhatsApp message to a company to get it out of the shareholding of the public airline TAP.

In this electoral campaign, Santos - who was always considered the representative of the left wing of the PS - has clearly turned towards the center to leave behind his image as an impulsive leftist.

He had good debates - he won the head-to-head with Luís Montenegro - and has demonstrated good preparation in the economic area.

The president of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Luís Montenegro.Jose CoelhoEFE

On the other side, the AD candidate,

Luís Montenegro,

leader of the

center-right

, has carried out a campaign focused on

few but clear messages

that he has maintained during all these months

in search of the useful vote

and the absolute majority that in the end has not arrived.

The Democratic Alliance's problems have come from other heavyweights in the party, not the candidate.

In particular, there were three very controversial interventions in the campaign that distanced AD from the center that Montenegro has sought.

Firstly,

Pedro Passos Coelho

, prime minister during the troika times, starred in a controversial intervention at a rally mid-campaign in which

he linked immigration and security

, fully entering into Chega's speech.

Another of the leaders of AD's list doubted a public intervention on

climate change

.

And finally, number four on the Lisbon list proposed in another rally

to hold a referendum

on the reform of the

Abortion Law

, an issue that Montenegro considers overcome with the last legal reform of the Socialist Government in 2015.

Montenegro ended up intervening in all three cases to rectify the party's discourse on these matters.

But there are those who think that everything could have been a strategy to get votes from Chega, which until the last days of this week, was the emerging party of the campaign.

Election day in Portugal has passed relatively normally, although for many minutes under the sudden intense downpours that have been shaking the country since Thursday.

Even so, the troubled weather did not deter the Portuguese, who

voted more than two years ago

.

Rain is less scary than coronavirus.

In total, 6,280 polling stations opened throughout Portugal from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. so that the 10,819,122 Portuguese registered could vote.

Of them, 203,000 voters had already exercised their right in advance.

This Sunday, residents of Portugal elect 226 of the 230 deputies of the Assembly of the Republic.

The other four are elected directly by the so-called Circle of Europe (two) and the Circle of the Rest of the World (two others).

There are 18 political forces that have participated in these elections.

But only eight of them had real chances of getting representation: Democratic Alliance (AD), the Socialist Party (PS), Chega (the radical right), Liberal Initiative (IL), the Left Bloc (BE), the Unitary Democratic Coalition ( CDU, the communists), the Animalist Party (PAN) and Livre (the environmentalists).