My analysis of the Portuguese general election of 2022

 The 2022 Portuguese general election which took place on Sunday was a clear victory for Antonia Costa as he secured a single party majority for the Socialist Party (PS) for the first time since multiparty democracy resumed in Portugal in 1975. It also marked a significant fracture for the Portuguese "right" as well as a sea change (or rather lake change).

PS won 117 seats, an increase of 9 from 2019 and enough to give them a 4 seat majority, and PS topped the poll in all of mainland Portugal for the first time since 2003 and only on the island of Madeira did PS not top the poll. With Portugal using PR lists with no threshold and with seats determined by region, it is almost impossible for any party, even PS and PSD (the Social Democrats, actually a liberal-conservative party despite the name) to win a single party majority in the Assembly of the [Portuguese] Republic. PS' gains came mainly at the expense of the Left Bloc (BE) and Unitary Democratic Coalition (CDU, comprising the Portuguese Communist Party and Portuguese Green Party), whose rejection of last year's budget caused the snap election. Both BE and CDU paid the price for voting alongside PS and CDS-PP in rejecting the budget, which their voters saw as a heinous betrayal. Furthermore, Portugal's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic was sound yet was not known for the severe restrictions of its neighbour Spain. BE endured its worst result since 2002, finishing with only 5 seats and 4.5% of the vote; furthermore BE leader Catarina Martins was lucky to hold onto her seat in Porto. The CDU performed almost as badly, losing half their seats and both the Portuguese Green Party deputies lost their seats in the process. 

The PSD, despite increasing their vote share by 1.5%, actually lost 3 seats, primarily because the rise of the nationalist right Chega (CH) and the libertarian right Liberal Initiative; Portuguese elections use the d'Hondt system which generally favours larger parties but it also means that when vote share increases are significant for an incoming party the consequences are dramatic, even if a larger party's vote share stays the same or increases slightly. Chega surprisingly became the third party in the Assembly, winning a total of 12 seats, the xenophobic and harsh on crime (a stance Portugal is not known for) attitudes of CH leader Andre Ventura notwithstanding. CH's votes actually came more at the expense of the Christian right CDS-PP (CDS-People's Party), which lost all 5 of its remaining seats and saw its vote share decrease to just 1.6%. Not only is this its worst ever result, but the increasing secularisation of the Portuguese populace (like what is happening in the Western Hemisphere in general) combined with the absorption of the hard right vote by CH means that it is unlikely to make a significant comeback in future. as it will have been effectively displaced by CH. Liberal Initiative, meanwhile, increased its seat total to 8, polling particularly well in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon where it finished third ahead of CH. The People-Animals-Nature party (PAN), meanwhile, having abstained on the aforementioned budget, lost all but one of its seats, its abstention at a critical juncture being frowned upon by voters, and dropped to just 1.5% of the vote, lucky to hold a seat in Lisbon. (There is previous form for this, in Canada: in 1980, the Social Credit Party decided to abstain on a crucial budget vote, which led to Canadian voters seeing the party as no longer relevant [especially since Real Caouette, its most popular leader, had died by then] and the Social Credit Party lost all 5 of its remaining MPs, never to return to the Canadian House of Commons and winding up in 1993.) Surprisingly LIVRE, a more moderate counterpart to the Portuguese Green Party, retained its sole seat and increased its vote share slightly to 1.3% even though Joacine Katar Moreira, its deputy, had been removed from its caucus (if you can call a single MP a caucus); Rui Tavares replaced her.

Parties that were not elected in 2019 lost what little support they had. In particular the syncretic environmentalist party React, Include, Recycle dropped from 0.7% to 0.4% and the Maoist Portuguese Communist Workers Party dropped from 0.7% to 0.2%, although the latter only fielded lists in 9 of the regions of Portugal, none of which polled even 1% in their respective region; arguably they were tactically supporting the Left Bloc lists in some areas including Porto. The racist right Rise Up party (formerly the National Renovator Party) lost most of what little support it had to CH, dropping to 0.09% of the vote. The wooden spoon award of this election went to the People's Monarchist Party, whose sole list in Madeira polled just 260 votes. 

The boost for Antonio Costa, who enjoys considerable popular support having reversed many of the early 2010s austerity policies imposed by Pedro Passos Coelho, did not improve turnout that much-only to just under 58%, the same as in 2011. He will continue as Prime Minister of Portugal but a 4 seat majority is not a secure majority so he will still have to seek compromise from the remaining CDU and BE deputies to some extent.