Far-right Chega party becomes main opposition in Portugal's parliament

Source: The Guardian

Far-right Chega party becomes main opposition in Portugal’s parliament

Party takes second place in election after overseas votes counted, overturning decades of bipartisan politics

Sam Jones in Madrid
Wed 28 May 2025 23.08 BST
Last modified on Thu 29 May 2025 00.23 BST

The far-right Chega party has overturned decades of bipartisan politics in Portugal by squeaking into second place in the country’s third snap election in three years, edging out the socialists to become the biggest opposition party in parliament.

The centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD), led by the prime minister, Luís Montenegro, finished first in the election 10 days ago, but once again fell well short of a majority, taking 31.8% of the vote and winning 91 seats in Portugal’s 230-seat assembly. But the race for second place was a closely fought contest between the Socialist party (PS) and Chega.

With 99% of the votes counted on election night itself, the provisional results had the PS and Chega tied on 58 seats each, although the socialists had a slightly larger share of the vote.

But when the overseas votes were counted and added to the national tally on Wednesday, Chega reached a final total of 60 seats and won 22.76% of the vote, while the PS stayed at 58 seats but maintained its marginally higher share of the vote (22.83%).

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/28/far-right-chega-party-becomes-main-opposition-in-portugals-parliament