He Social Democratic Party (PSD) of Portugal, center-right, has emerged this Sunday with victory in the municipal elections, achieving control of the main cities of the country, including the two most populated: Lisbon, the capital, and Porto, although against some socialists who are making a comeback.
Although he Socialist party has lost has lost several town councils, the truth is that they have managed best results than in the previous elections, the legislative ones, and is the second municipalist force.
In fact, it has ousted Luís Montenegro’s PSD in Bragança, Viseu, Coimbra and Faro and has achieved 125 municipalities and about 29% of the votes, not far from the 132 town councils of the center-right and its 33.5% of slips.
Chega hit
The surprise has come with bump of the Chega’s far-rightwhich has not been able to repeat the triumph of the elections last May when it became the second force in Parliament. They have only achieved three mayorships, the first in its history: that of Albufeira, in the Algarve, that of Entroncamento, north of Lisbon, and that of São Vicente de Madeira.
The rest of the town councils have been obtained by the different parties that there are in Portugal, which have taken over 18 mayorships, the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), with 12and the Christian Democrat CDS-PP, with sixes.
With these results, Portugal has shown that it remains a practically two-party country at the municipal level, where the PSD has won in the two main cities of the country, Lisbon – despite the September funicular accident with 16 deaths – and Porto, as well as in other large urban centers such as Braga, Aveiro, Vila Nova de Gaia, Sintra and Cascais.
The socialists recover
Los socialist have triumphed in district capitals, as in Coimbra, Viseu, Braganza, Évora and Faro. In fact, these results once again place the Socialist Party in a much more advantageous position than months ago.
The leader of the PS, José Luís Carneirorecalled this Sunday how three months ago “some” claimed that his party had entered into “an electoral erosion” similar to that of the French socialist party, after remaining in the legislative elections for the first time in its history as the third force in the Portuguese Parliament behind the far-right Chega and the PSD.
Although the results are much better than expected, the Portuguese socialists admit that they have not achieved all the objectives they had, although they have achieved others that they could not have imagined just over three months ago.
After these municipal ones, with a participation of 59.4%, the socialists become the second force with more city councils in their power, after in the 2021 elections they were the party with the most votes and that achieved the greatest number of mayoralties.
In a speech this Sunday night, Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, president of the PSD, stressed that “many considered it an unattainable goal” to surpass the socialists in these elections, but added that after this Sunday’s vote their formation is “the largest Portuguese party in local power, the largest at the regional level and in the Assembly of the Republic (Parliament)”.