{"id":322480,"date":"2026-01-19T11:01:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T03:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=322480"},"modified":"2026-01-19T11:01:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T03:01:08","slug":"portugal-center-left-wins-presidential-election-first-round-setting-up-showdown-with-far-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=322480","title":{"rendered":"Portugal: Center left wins presidential election first round, setting up showdown with far right"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"PORTUGAL-POLITICS-ELECTION-VOTE\"\/
Portuguese Presidential candidate Antonio Jose Seguro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

LISBON, Jan 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Ant\u00f3nio Jos\u00e9 Seguro, a former head of Portugal\u2019s Socialist Party, won a surprise victory in the first round of the country\u2019s presidential election on Sunday, according to the national elections commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With just over 31 percent of the votes cast, Seguro\u2019s triumph was an unforeseen upset over Andr\u00e9 Ventura<\/a>, leader of the far-right Chega party. Pre-election surveys had consistently shown him enjoying the strongest support among eligible voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As none of the candidates secured an absolute majority, Seguro and Ventura will face each other in a Feb 8 runoff election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ventura\u2019s ability to secure almost a quarter of the ballots Sunday emphasizes\u00a0how remarkable his Chega party\u2019s growth\u00a0has been in Portugal. In six years the ultranationalist grouping has gone from having just one lawmaker in parliament to becoming the country\u2019s\u00a0leading opposition party<\/a>, controlling more than a quarter of seats in the country\u2019s legislature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Portugal is a semi-presidential republic<\/a> in which the president serves as the country\u2019s head of state and has the power to appoint the prime minister and dissolve parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The president also has the right to veto laws, ratify international treaties, appoint some members of key state and judicial bodies, and issue pardons. Moreover, as supreme commander of the country\u2019s armed forces, the president wields significant influence on Portuguese military deployments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Law professor Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa<\/a> has dominated the presidency for the past decade. Despite being the son of a minister in the 20th century administration of dictator Ant\u00f3nio de Oliveira Salazar, Rebelo de Sousa helped write the country\u2019s democratic constitution and tapped that knowledge to compose exhaustive commentaries on government legislation. He was also renowned for his seemingly boundless energy and his willingness to take selfies<\/a> with members of the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although 14 candidates vied to succeed Rebelo de Sousa, three were disqualified for lacking the required number of signatures to run for the presidency. In addition to Seguro and Ventura, European Parliament lawmaker Jo\u00e3o Cotrim de Figueiredo, conservative TV commentatorLu\u00eds Marques Mendes and Admiral Henrique Gouveia e Melo, a naval officer who oversaw the successful rollout of the Covid vaccine in Portugal,were among the top contenders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although he fell short of qualifying for the second round, Cotrim de Figueiredo secured a notable 16 percent of the vote. Earlier this week the politician, who leads the Liberal Initiative, a liberal economic party, and is vice-president of the Renew Group in the European Parliament, called an emergency press conference after a former advisor said she had filed a\u00a0sexual harassment complaint<\/a>\u00a0against him in 2023. The lawmaker\u00a0denied the accusations<\/a>, which he dismissed as \u201cdirty campaign\u201d tactics, and retained the backing of hundreds of thousands of voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marques Mendes, the candidate representing the governing Social Democratic Party, came in fifth place. Left-wing politician Caterina Martins said his defeat underscored public discontent with Prime Minister Lu\u00eds Montenegro\u2019s government, while adding that Ventura\u2019s second-place finish exemplified the \u201cTrumpification<\/a>\u201d of the country\u2019s right-wing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But while Ventura performed strongly on Sunday, few believe he has a real shot at winning the runoff vote. Political watchers expect the public to mobilize to prevent him from capturing the presidential palace and to rally round Seguro. That may not matter to Ventura, who said he has no real interest in being \u201cthe president of all Portuguese people<\/a>\u201d and has hinted he was only running to gauge support<\/a> for his eventual candidacy for prime minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year\u2019s presidential election is the sixth major vote held in Portugal since 2024, including\u00a0three national elections<\/a>, a European Parliament vote, and nationwide\u00a0municipal elections<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remarkably, voter fatigue doesn\u2019t seem to be a significant factor: Whereas 60 percent of voters declined to cast ballots when presidential elections were last held in 2021, the abstention rate fell to a 20-year low on Sunday, with\u00a0around 40 percent<\/a>\u00a0of registered voters participating.\u00a0— NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LISBON, Jan 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Ant\u00f3nio Jos\u00e9 Seguro, a former head of Portugal\u2019s Socialist Party, won a surprise victory in the first round of the country\u2019s presidential election on Sunday, according to the national elections commission. With just over 31 percent of the votes cast, Seguro\u2019s triumph was an unforeseen upset over Andr\u00e9 Ventura, leader of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[209],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322480"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=322480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322481,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322480\/revisions\/322481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=322480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=322480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=322480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}