Portugal’s Populist Right Underperforms in Local Elections

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ER Editor: See this we published yesterday in anticipation of the results —

Portugal’s local elections poised to be another win for Europe’s populist right

On the results, The Guardian has this —

Portugal’s far-right Chega falls well short of expectations in local elections

Portugal’s far-right Chega party has won its first mayoral seats in local elections, final results showed, but fell well short of expectations and its vote share halved from parliamentary elections in May.

The six-year-old nationalist party, whose name means “Enough”, took control of three city halls: São Vicente on the island of Madeira; the central town of Entroncamento; and Albufeira in the south. It won a 11.86% share of the overall vote.

But Chega’s leader, André Ventura, admitted “we wanted more” and said Sunday’s elections had not given the party “the victory we wanted”.

Some pre-election polls had put Chega ahead in the national vote for the first time, and it had hoped its cocktail of populist policies, including stricter immigration controls and chemical castration for paedophiles, might help it win 30 municipalities.

Chega won almost 23% of the vote in parliamentary elections, giving it 60 MPs and making it Portugal’s official opposition party. Analysts said the local election results suggested the party could underperform when its Ventura was not on the ballot.

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Far right fizzles in Portugal’s local elections

Chega failed to conquer any major cities but is set to receive three times as many votes as in 2021.

AITOR HERNANDEZ-MORALES for POLITICO

Party leader André Ventura said “this was a good night,” but admitted Chega, which ran candidates in 307 of the country’s 308 municipalities, hadn’t achieved its objectives. While the number of electors backing the ultranationalist group tripled in comparison to the results recorded when local elections were last held in 2021, its total vote count on Sunday was less than half of what it received when a snap parliamentary election was held five months ago.

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