A party erupted at the headquarters of his Socialist Party after Costa’s third win in a row was announced. “What a relief,” sighs a woman waving a flag, referring to the polls predicting a neck-and-neck race.
Disappointment
But this time they were completely wrong. And with that, the biggest disappointment during this ballot box is for the centre-right PSD of Riu Rio, the former mayor of Porto, Portugal’s second-largest city. His party gets stuck at about 30 percent of the vote and comes second. In the latest polls it seemed that the party of Rio Antonio Costa would take the crown. The third party is Chega with around eight percent of the vote – making Portugal also a significant far-right party. Turnout was traditionally low in Portugal at just over fifty percent.
The result means Costa can once again form a government, alone or with coalition partners. That way he can try again to draw up a state budget that will pass parliament. It was precisely this budget that stumbled into his previous government in November, after which President Rebelo de Sousa dissolved the government and called for a new ballot.
Minority Cabinet
At the time, Costa’s party formed a minority government, with the support of the radical left Communist Party and the Left Bloc, but those parties dropped him when it came to the country’s budget. The voters seem to be punishing them for that: it is precisely these two parties that lose many seats this time compared to the one in 2019.
Portugal is the only European country to have a Social Democratic government three times in a row this century, while in other countries these parties have suffered defeat after defeat. But in Portugal, Costa already led the country after the elections in 2015 and in 2019. When he took office as prime minister in 2015, Portugal had been paralyzed by the financial crisis and the conservative government had been ordered by the European troika to provide credit. belt tightened. Wages were low, unemployment was high – especially among the young. But ‘miracle doctor’ Costa promised to break with that policy and bring more prosperity to the population. Despite skeptical predictions from Brussels, he increased wages and benefits and managed to get out of the crisis investing.
Options
Should Costa depend on coalition partners to rule, he has several options. He could rejoin his former radical left partners or opt for the ecological parties Pan and Livre. It could also try to get closer to the centre-right PSD in order to form a large and stable coalition.