21.55: Official results now put António José Seguro on 30.6%; André Ventura on 24.3%; Cotrim de Figueiredo on 15.5% and Henrique Gouveia e Melo in 4th place with 12.2%. This means Luís Marques Mendes has slipped further (again) and is now in 5th position, with 12.0% of today’s votes. These results will fluctuate over the course of the night but the ‘general picture’ is as it was two hours ago: a second round between the ‘safe’ PS candidate António José Seguro and the ‘far right’ agitator who has lead CHEGA, in just a few whirlwind years, from a party with just one MP to one with 50, which has toppled the traditional former two-party system by becoming the second political force in the country.
21.50: Prime minister Luís Montenegro gives a short speech in which he welcomes the increased voter turnout compared to previous years, and recognises that what happened this evening “was democracy”. It was not what his party wanted; it was not what he himself wanted – but the people exercised their “legitimate choice” and while the PSD (in coalition with CDS) was ‘chosen to run the country’, a candidate from the party’s ‘political space’ was not.
What the PM did stress was that while the government accepts that it has been chosen to run the country / the majority of the local councils and other political bodies, it will not be participating in the second round of these elections – and therefore will not be endorsing either candidate.
This assertion is clearly designed to be the ‘official one’. Unofficially, it has already been accepted that many PSD voters will vote for António José Seguro in order not to see André Ventura in the ‘highest political office of the country’.
There are now three weeks to go before the next round of voting.
To recap: the Presidency of the Republic is largely a symbolic role. The president does not exercise ‘executive power’ and, most of the time, he needs to be seen as ‘above political disputes’. His ‘value’ lies in being a skilled mediator and being able to quell tensions. The greatest power of a president is the ability to dissolve parliament and call new elections. This is something that outgoing President Marcelo has had to do on three occasions. But, as Marcelo himself has said very recently, this new presidency will be much more challenging than his was – mainly because the world itself is in such a state of flux.
21.30: Luís Marques Mendes ‘concedes defeat’ with short ‘declaration’ (not open to questions from the press), thanking all those who believed in him – and stressing that he stood for the Presidency of the Republic ‘on his own’ (this was presumably an attempt to distance his ‘defeat’ from being interpreted as a defeat of the government, which is indeed the way commentators are interpreting the result). “I love my country and I was honoured to stand as a candidate for the President of the Republic,” he said, adding that he did not want to endorse any of the candidates in the second round with the votes cast for him in the first, albeit he wanted to congratulate them on their success.
21.20: Commentator Bernardo Ferrão believes the results tonight put the AD centre-right government in a position of ‘great fragility’. The immediate future could become “very complicated” for the executive of Luís Montenegro, he said.
21.15: PS Socialist leader, José Luís Carneiro – himself a moderate Socialist very much in the same vein as António José Seguro – has welcomed the results this evening, saying “this is a very special moment for our democratic life”. Carneiro put Seguro’s win down to his exemplary campaign in which he showed “elevation, respect for his adversaries, and value for the political pluralism of electoral campaigns”. He also did not rise to the “many provocations that he received from his adversaries”. He showed a “great sense of state and institutional elevation” – which cannot easily be said of most of the other candidates.
21.14: Commentator for SIC, Ricardo Costa, puts boot in – dubbing Luís Marques Mendes’ results “catastrophic” – for him and for the PSD party. He also stressed how voters’ choices had changed over the course of the campaign, saying that polls showed that 30% changed their choices in the last week.
21.08: Official results now showing Cotrim de Figueiredo in 3rd place (ahead of Marques Mendes) with 14.5% of the votes cast. Marques Mendes drops back to 4th place with 11.9% – but António José Seguro is being hailed consistently as the ‘major winner of the night’.
21.02: Ventura is back talking to reporters about a ‘new right’ in Portugal – and how people can see that the country ‘could be different’.
20.45: Official results start emerging: Seguro with 30.2%, ahead of Ventura with 26.9% and Marques Mendes in 3rd place with 14.5%. These results do not change the ultimate position but they do give Marques Mendes a little bit to smile about on what will otherwise be a very grim start to the evening (see update above).
20.36: André Ventura emerges from Mass in Lisbon to hear the forecasts and tell reporters waiting outside that everything shows that the country is changing – and changing to the right. His comments suggest he believes he can beat António José Seguro in a likely second round of voting on February 8. But previous polling has suggested that this might be a tad optimistic. Polls have shown that PSD voters, if they see their own candidate knocked out, would throw their second round votes behind a candidate that is not André Ventura.
20.20: “Total silence” is way tonight’s forecasts have been received in the Lisbon hotel where supporters of Luís Marques Mendes are gathered. To be fair, the candidate did not look that animated when he arrived at the venue shortly before 8pm.
20.16: Seguro ‘unlikely to make any kind of public appearance before results are confirmed’, say reporters. It is looking very much like a second round will nonetheless be needed, on February 8, between Seguro and (most probably) André Ventura.
20.15: Jubilant scenes are being broadcast from António José Seguro’s campaign headquarters in Caldas da Rainha.
20.00: Forecasts for the results tonight of the elections for the 6th President of the Republic since the revolution of 1974 have started being broadcast.
SIC Notícias is running with the predictions of ICS/ISCTE/ GK and Pitagórica (two universities and two market research entities) which put the PS candidate António José Seguro way in the lead, ahead of CHEGA candidate André Ventura and IL candidate João Cotrim de Figueiredo.
The forecasts suggest António José Seguro will poll as much as 35.2% of votes cast today; André Ventura clinching between 19.9% and 24.1% – and João Cotrim de Figeiredo in 3rd position with between 16.3% and 20.1%.
In spite of the number of candidates on the ballot paper (11), this has always been a ‘race’ between five men – four of them seasoned politicians.
The ‘outsider’, former Naval admiral Henrique Gouveia e Melo is seen by ICS/ ISCTE/ GK and Pitagórica as coming in in 4th place, with between 9.2% and 12.4% of votes cast – and Luís Marques Mendes (the government’s preferred candidate) coming in 5th with between 9.1% and 12.3%).
If these results are anywhere near the mark, they will leave the government very much in check: their preferred candidate has been dealt a bitter blow, very possibly showing voters’ feelings about the AD centre-right executive.
