Surge in Portuguese Left Bloc Support Puts Socialist Party on the Spot
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- Published on Monday, 26 October 2015 22:45
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1179 .... October 27, 2015
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Surge in Portuguese Left Bloc Support Puts Socialist Party on the Spot
Dick Nichols
Will Portugal finally see the end of austerity as administered for four years by the right-wing coalition (known as Portugal Ahead) composed of the Social-Democratic Party (PSD) and Democratic and Social Centre-People's Party (CDS-PP)?
In the country's legislative October 4 elections this governing alliance, running for the first time as a single ticket called Portugal Ahead (except on the Azores), won the elections, but with only 38.4 per cent of the vote (down from 50.4 per cent at the 2011 national election). Of the 5.4 million Portuguese who voted, 739,000 turned their back on the outgoing government, leaving it with only 107 seats in the 230-seat parliament (down 25). As... a result, the PSD-CSD alliance, which boasted during the election campaign of being the most reliable tool of the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund), could even lose government.
Some of the votes lost to the right would have joined the ranks of the 4.27 million abstaining (an increase of 238,000 in a country of 9.68 million voters): this 44.1 per cent abstention rate was the highest since the 1974 Carnation Revolution overthrew the dictatorship of António Salazar and his successor Marcelo Caetano.
A lot would have gone to the Socialist Party (PS), which governed the country from 2005 until 2011. However, the total PS vote increased by only 4.3 per cent, from 28 per cent to 32.3 per cent (180,000 votes extra), giving it 86 seats (12 more). The PS even failed to beat Portugal Ahead in Lisbon, where PS leader António Costa was mayor before becoming PS leader earlier this year.
