All you need to know about this Sunday’s municipal elections in Portugal
The Portuguese Socialist Party (PS) achieved an historic result, but lost absolute majority in Lisbon. Most found the results of the Portuguese Social Democratic Party (PSD) disappointing.
To summarize this Sunday’s municipal elections in Portugal: the Socialist Party (PS) was the big winner. On the contrary, the Portuguese Social Democratic Party (PSD) achieved its worse results ever and CDU (Coalition for Democratic Unity) lost significant city halls to the PS.
PS achieves its best results ever
The party got 157 mayors, 141 absolute majorities and the Lisbon Municipal Council. The Portuguese prime minister António Costa, speaking as secretary-general for the party, took the chance to state he believes this result “reinforces PS’ electoral strength”.
In Lisbon, Fernando Medina remained in office as mayor, but lost overall majority in the Municipal Council. This means the party only has eight deputy-mayors out of all 17 for Lisbon.
PSD — the big defeated
PSD came in third both in Lisbon and Oporto and elected fewer mayors — even in municipalities where PSD has a coalition with CDS (Portuguese Democratic and Social Center Party). Nationwide, PSD received 16.97% of the votes, plus another 8.75% in coalitions with CDS.
Pedro Passos Coelho, former prime minister and the current leader of the party, acknowledged PSD had “one of the worst results ever”, and that they will have to be assessed. Without saying he will resign, Passos Coelho did say he would ponder, in light of these results, if he should re-apply for the leadership of the party.
CDS strengthens with Assunção Cristas’ leadership
Assunção Cristas, CDS-PP’s candidate for mayor of Lisbon, was the second most voted in the Portuguese Capital city. She had previously stated, in Lisbon, that the party would have the best results “since 1976”. In 2013, the PSD-CDS coalition elected four deputy-mayors for Lisbon’s municipality — in 2017, CDS stood alone and achieved those same results. CDS-PP was also able to elect mayors for four municipalities in Portugal.
CDU lost historical municipalities
The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) continued to be the third municipal political strength in the country, but its results were worse than in the previous legislative elections. CDU lost some of its most significant city halls to the Socialist Party.
The Left Block (BE) elected more people
Catarina Martins, leader of the Left Block, chose to highlight the party’s result in Lisbon: for the first time, BE elected a deputy-mayor for the Portuguese capital city. However, the country was not able to win any other municipality nor stop any other absolute majority; nonetheless, the goals have been met, Catarina Martins stated.
