An Aximage poll for Diário de Notícias has put André Ventura’s party in the lead in Portugal for the very first time, with 26.8% of the vote, compared to the 25.9% polled by government coalition AD.
It’s very close – what pollsters call ‘within the margin of error’ – but it will come as something of a rude awakening to ‘traditional’ political leaders who just don’t seem to have what it takes to keep André Ventura down, in spite of his gaffes, and ‘deliberate mistakes’ – and when various members of his party have disgraced themselves in quite surreal ways.
For AD, it will be particularly ‘galling’, in that the last poll put the coalition as the preferred choice of 31.8% of respondents.
PS Socialists, however, have something to celebrate: the party’s popularity has increased since José Luís Carneiro took over as secretary-general. The poll showed support of 23.6%, when in the elections last May, the party only managed 22.8% of the vote.
And taken with the margin of error in mind, all three parties are in a technical tie (4.1% being the established margin).
As for the other parties, another major development is that LIVRE has overtaken Iniciativa Liberal: the latter, led by Mariana Leitão, has grown from 5.3% in the legislative elections to 6.2% in this poll, while Rui Tavares’ LIVRE has shot up from 4.1% to 6.5%.
PCP/ CDU communists, the Left Bloc and PAN have also seen increases compared to the last elections, but these “were very small and insufficient to change the balance of power, with 3.1%, 2.4% and 1.7% of voting intentions, respectively”, explain reports.
The Left Bloc has also come in for a degree of criticism recently considering its only MP is travelling in a humanitarian flotilla (towards Gaza) that seems to have twice ‘cried wolf’ over perceived ‘drone attacks’ which ended up being accidents of their own making.
Source: Observador/ Expresso
