Exit polls coming in an hour after polling stations closed have put António José Seguro as the clear winner of Portugal’s presidential elections.
The second-round of voting in this hard-fought campaign saw a much lower abstention rate than initially feared – between 37.5% and 42.5%.
Neither candidate has ‘accepted’ the results yet – albeit the Caldas da Rainha ‘headquarters’ of Seguro’s campaign is already celebrating.
His adversary – CHEGA leader André Ventura – is ‘still at Mass in Lisbon’, but projections put him at coming in with between 28.6% of the vote, and 33.0%.
Projections for Seguro are that he has walked this contest, with between 67% and 71.4% of the vote.
This has always been the expected ‘end result’. It is also almost certainly what André Ventura ‘expected’ – as he has made no bones about the fact that he intends to be a future prime minister.
Ventura’s participation in this contest – which at times has been as ‘exciting’ as watching water come extremely slowly to the boil – was always seen as a way of ‘promoting himself’ and his party, ahead of future legislative elections.
For now (8.10pm), André Ventura is absent from his campaign headquarters – and television channels are simply broadcasting the polling results, ahead of the definitive numbers coming in.
The Resident will bring a full report tomorrow – but it is looking very much as it has looked since the results of the first round of voting three weeks ago: António José Seguro (a former leader of the PS Socialist party) will be the new incumbent of Belém Palace.
As for the votes in municipalities that have delayed voting until next Sunday, these amount to roughly 37,000 – which would not change tonight’s result.
Source: SIC Notícias – poll results by IGS/ ISCTE/ GFK/ Pitagórica
