Get together secures robust new mandate following larger than anticipated turnout after folks with COVID have been allowed to vote.
Portugal’s centre-left Socialists have gained an outright parliamentary majority in Sunday’s snap election, securing a powerful new mandate for Prime Minister Antonio Costa because the nation prepares to deploy billions of {dollars} in European Union assist within the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The end result, boosted by a better than anticipated turnout regardless of the coronavirus pandemic, got here as a shock after the Socialists had misplaced a lot of their lead in current opinion polls.
In a poll that passed off amid a surge of coronavirus circumstances blamed on the Omicron variant, and with about a million folks with COVID-19 allowed to go away residence to solid their ballots, the Socialists took 117 seats within the 230-seat parliament, up from 108 within the outgoing meeting.
“An absolute majority doesn’t imply absolute energy. It doesn’t imply to manipulate alone. It’s an elevated duty and it means to manipulate with and for all Portuguese,” Costa mentioned in his victory speech.
Earlier than the ultimate outcomes got here in, Costa mentioned the get together had gained 117 or 118 seats within the 230-seat parliament, up from 108 within the 2019 election, and his supporters erupted in loud celebrations, singing the previous revolutionary anthem “Grandola” and waving flags.
The vote was known as in November after Costa’s former hard-left Communist and Left Bloc allies joined the suitable to defeat his minority authorities’s price range.
The 2 far-left events paid the value, shedding greater than a half of their seats, in response to exit polls.
The centre-right Social Democrats have been at a distant second with 71 seats, whereas the far-right Chega emerged because the third-largest parliamentary drive, taking 12 seats in parliament from only one within the earlier legislature.
4 seats nonetheless must be attributed within the coming days with the outcomes of votes solid overseas, however in 2019 the Socialists obtained two of these.
Vote for stability
Costa, who first got here to energy in 2015, has presided over a interval of regular financial progress that helped shrink the price range deficit and even eke out a small surplus in 2019, earlier than the pandemic struck.
Catia Reis, a 39-year-old human assets supervisor, mentioned she had voted for the Socialists as a result of “stability is required”.
“It’s not the second for a political change,” she informed the AFP information company after casting her poll at a Lisbon polling station.
It will likely be the primary time the Socialists have an absolute majority and the stakes are excessive for Costa’s incoming administration.
Portugal, a rustic of 10.3 million folks and the poorest in western Europe, is poised to start deploying 16.6 billion euro ($18.7bn) in EU restoration funds it is because of obtain by 2026. Some will go to public tasks, corresponding to main infrastructure.
With greater than a tenth of the inhabitants estimated to be isolating as a result of COVID-19, the federal government had allowed folks with the virus to go away isolation and solid ballots in individual, and electoral officers donned safety fits within the afternoon to obtain them.
Turnout was on observe to beat 2019’s record-low 49 p.c participation.
As in lots of European nations, COVID-19 infections have spiked, though vaccination has stored deaths and hospitalisations decrease than in earlier waves.