Portugal’s far-right Chega party dominated the headlines in an unexpected way following last Sunday’s local elections.
Instead of overwhelming opponents as predicted, it had far less success with local voters than in the national election nine months ago.
The ruling centre-right Social Democratic Alliance (AD) won in 136 municipalities on Sunday, including in the two largest cities, Lisbon and Porto. That was up from 114 in the local elections four years ago. The centre-left Social Democrats (PS) came second with 128. Chega had hoped for 30 but managed only three, Albufeira in the Algarve being one of them. Chega failed even to reach the number of independent candidates, who won 20 municipalities, or the Communist party’s 12.
Chega’s leader Andre Ventura was remarkably optimistic as his recently formed party has just won its very first mayoral seats, thus adding it locally to the national stage.
Despite its shortcomings in Sunday’s elections, Chega almost tripled its share of the votes from the previous local elections in 2012. This led Ventura, to declare the latest results a "great victory" for his party, which has expanded somewhat to become a party with a municipal base. It won the second largest number of seats in the last general election and thus became the official opposition party in parliament after overturning decades of bipartisan politics.
Ventura could become Portugal’s next prime minister if Chega win the next snap election, which will be the third in three years.
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