Portugal held presidential elections on Sunday, with polls suggesting that António José Seguro, a former leader of Portugal’s Socialist Party with wide establishment support, was headed for a convincing victory over his nationalist opponent, André Ventura.
The far right’s presence in the runoff nevertheless alarmed the European establishment. It suggested that Portugal, once considered one of the Continent’s last holdouts against hard-line nationalism, was no longer immune to the populist wave. Initial results were expected on Sunday evening.
Mr. Seguro’s commanding lead in the polls was due in part, analysts said, to mainstream conservative backing of his candidacy in order to beat back Mr. Ventura and his surging Chega party. (Chega means “enough” in Portuguese.) Mr. Ventura won nearly a quarter of the vote during the crowded first round of voting in January, putting him into Sunday’s runoff against Mr. Seguro, who topped the first round with nearly a third of the votes.
“Portugal’s old reputation as an exception to the far-right surge in Europe is clearly over,” said João Cancela, a professor of political science at NOVA University in Lisbon. Even though Mr. Ventura was set to lose, Professor Cancela said, his strong showing illustrated that Chega now had geographic reach across a country that in recent years has become a booming tourist destination, flush with foreign investment, expatriates and a growing economy.
But with those benefits came drawbacks and grievances, including concerns about housing and the cost of living, that have fed Mr. Ventura’s rise. “This election confirms a structural shift rather than a temporary blip,” Professor Cancela said.
Portugal is now feeling the same nationalist current moving much of Europe. Italy is governed by the Giorgia Meloni, whose career was forged in post-fascist parties. The National Rally, France’s main far-right party, has gone from an outcast to the front-runner in next year’s presidential elections. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany party is neck-and-neck in the polls with the country’s center-right. Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K. party is now a serious contender in Britain.
In the days before the voting, deadly storms and floods disrupted the campaign and postponed voting in a small minority of regions, though not to an extent likely to influence the outcome. The presidency is traditionally a ceremonial role, though it can veto laws and is imbued with special powers during political crises, such as dissolving parliament. In the campaign to succeed the outgoing president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Mr. Seguro said he wouldn’t overstep into the territory of “shadow prime minister,” while Mr. Ventura had a more expansionist view, promising an “interventionist presidency.”
Nationalists and their opponents across the Continent looked to Sunday’s election as yet another bellwether for populism’s strength. Chega is the first hard-right party to surge so strongly in Portugal since the end of the nationalist dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar.
Just six years ago, in 2019, Mr. Ventura, a former soccer commentator, became Chega’s first member of parliament. Since then, the party has grown on the oxygen of social media outrage and anti-immigrant, anti-Roma and anti-corruption sentiment to become the country’s leading opposition force.
Chega’s support has increased especially among young Portuguese and those who are suffering financially. Its message has made inroads into formerly left-wing strongholds where working class voters, frustrated with housing prices and shortages, sparse jobs and increased immigration, have sought a candidate who directly speaks to their concerns.
Chega’s political posters during the first round of the election declared “Isto não é o Bangladesh!” or “This is not Bangladesh.” For many Chega voters, Bangladeshis have become a shorthand for the doubling of the migrant population in Portugal in the last decade.
Like in France in recent elections, the Portuguese establishment has tried to build a firewall against the far right by banding together across ideological lines to appeal to moderate voters.
Self-declared “nonsocialist” figures, including leading center-right conservatives, signed an open letter backing Mr. Seguro, arguing that the election amounted to a fork in the road between liberal and illiberal forces, and that Mr. Ventura’s candidacy was beyond the democratic pale. The country’s leading conservatives, including the former president and prime minister, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, spoke out against Mr. Ventura.
“The country is sending a message that Portugal is a moderate country and that we value democracy,” said Carlos Moedas, the center-right mayor of Lisbon, and former European Union official, who said on Sunday that he voted for Mr. Seguro.
A landslide victory for Mr. Seguro, the mayor said, would owe much to the country’s moderates, including center-right leaders like himself, rallying around him and showing Europe a path forward against extremism.
Mr. Moedas worried though that unhappy voters might continue to turn to Chega precisely because a unified establishment had formed against the party, allowing Mr. Ventura to vacuum up the disaffected vote.
Trying to reach voters who seemed motivated only by anger was “the big question,” he said. “It’s a world wide trend and I hope we can stop it in Portugal at some point.”
The country’s center-right Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, didn’t publicly endorse a candidate, a decision that reflected how many now see Chega as a permanent fixture of the Portuguese political landscape. Analysts said Mr. Montenegro wanted to avoid alienating more conservative elements of his base and upsetting Chega, whose support he may need to pass legislation in parliament.
Mr. Ventura has complained about being “canceled” by the Portuguese establishment, and said in a debate before the election that people with entrenched interests were more motivated to vote against him than to vote for Mr. Seguro. It was a critique that echoed Vice President JD Vance’s broadside against the European establishment last year in Germany, when he urged Europe to stop blocking populist, and once taboo, parties from entering the mainstream.
Carlos Barragán contributed reporting from Madrid.
Jason Horowitz is the Madrid bureau chief for The Times, covering Spain, Portugal and the way people live throughout Europe.
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