Chega, the sole national-conservative political party represented in Portuguese parliament, continues to witness its support among the people rise, with the latest opinion survey indicating that, if elections were held today, the party would achieve its best result since forming in 2019.
The opinion survey, conducted by the Portuguese market research firm Aximage, revealed that Chega, perhaps the country’s only genuine right-wing, anti-establishment political force, appears to be siphoning off votes from the center-Right Social Democratic Party (SDP), with polling data placing the party at 12.9 of the national vote, up from just under 9% in late September.
Meanwhile, as has been witnessed in case after case across the continent, support for the ruling, left-liberal Socialist Party (PD) continues to plummet, having sunk to 27%, two points ahead of the second-largest party, the Social Democratic Party, and down from the 41.7% it garnered in Portugal’s snap elections nearly one year ago, following the country’s budget crisis.
For those who have been paying moderately close attention to European politics over the past several years—and especially over the last year to six months—Chega’s continued electoral ascendency is indicative of a much broader trend presently taking place across much of Europe.
Earlier this month, multiple polls revealed that The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ)—which holds similar positions on immigration, security, anti-globalism, and cultural issues as Chega—is now the most popular political force in the country, as support for the ruling, establishment center-Right People’s Party (ÖVP) has fallen off a cliff as it has shown itself wholly incapable of addressing—and perhaps indifferent to—the litany of issues making life worse for working and middle-class Austrians.
Similarly, the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), a party that maintains close ties with the FPÖ, has also seen its popularity surge in recent months, especially in the eastern part of the country, as it—like the FPÖ—is the only party represented in parliament which is skeptical of both sanctions against Russia, and endless military escalation in Ukraine. Like Austria, the sanctions have had and continue to have a devastating impact on the German economy.
Some of the Nordic countries, apart from Sweden, which witnessed its monumental shift to the Right last September, are seeing similar political trends as well.
The latest opinion survey out of Finland, carried out roughly two weeks ago, revealed that support for both the national-conservative Finns Party (PS) and the center-Right National Coalition Party (Kok) has exceeded that of Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s left-liberal Social Democratic Party, as The European Conservative previously reported.
Similarly, although not quite analogously, the newest opinion polls have indicated that Norwegian voters are abandoning the ruling, establishment coalition—comprised of the left-liberal Labor Party and the agrarian Center Party—for the right-of-center parties like the Conservative Party and the national-conservative Progress Party.
