The right-wing Chega party broke the mould of Portuguese politics on Sunday, finishing third with 18% of the vote—up from 7% in 2022, and just 1.3% back in 2019. Party leader André Ventura declared that he is open to entering government in a coalition deal with the centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD), despite attempts to brand the insurgent conservatives ‘far-right’ and isolate them in parliament.
Portugal veered rightwards following November’s grift scandal that toppled the ruling socialists (PS), with Chega securing approximately 45 seats in the 230-seat parliament, unprecedented for a party founded only in 2019 in a historically left-wing state.
While the centre-right effectively retained its electoral base under the umbrella of the AD alliance, upstarts Chega appear to have eaten into one-third of the PS vote share.
Speaking immediately after the exit polls were released, youth activist José Maria Matias was beaming, describing it as “a historic day for Portugal” and saying that he now expected a cross-party coalition between the centre-right and the socialists, leaving Chega as the de facto national opposition.
Despite impressive results, Chega looks like it will be excluded from becoming the preferred coalition party of the centre-right. Following the release of exit polls, AD leader Luis Montenegro ruled out any deal with the right-wing populists. Power in Portugal has alternated consecutively between the socialist PS and the more moderate Social Democratic Party since democratisation, with Chega now radically challenging the political status quo.
On a militant anti-corruption platform that promised to make up for decades of socialist mismanagement, Ventura and his party attracted ample support from traditional Lisbon working-class voters who had previously voted socialist.
Sunday’s election showed a higher-than-expected turnout. International outlets are already issuing cliched warnings over the risk of Chega playing a kingmaker role in the next Portuguese government, a sign that left-wing hegemony is breaking down.
The election cycle before Sunday’s vote was defined by the recent green corruption scandal that brought down socialist PM António Costa, with Chega’s clean-cut, anti-grift messaging enabling the party to connect with a pool of dissatisfied voters.
Chega’s advances have already been praised by various nationalist parties in France and Spain, while Fidesz’s head of the international secretariat, Ádám Samu Balázs, praised the party as a natural friend and ally of the conservative Hungarian government.
A good showing for Chega sets the tone for June’s European elections—the first the party will contest—with the results in Lisbon firing the starter pistol for populist success in the upcoming electoral cycle.
