Voter turnout for the election today of the next President of the Republic stood at 45.51% as of 4pm, according to data from the General Secretariat of the Ministry of Internal Administration. This puts it higher than in the last elections – on January 24, 2021 (during the pandemic, and again in January, when turnout was just 35.44%).
In the 2016 presidential elections (won by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa), voter turnout was 37.69%.
In other words, compared to 10 years ago, voter turnout has increased by 7.82 percentage points.
Polling stations for these elections opened today at 8pm in mainland Portugal and Madeira, and an hour later in the Azores due to the time difference. They closed at 7pm.
More than 11 million voters were eligible to choose the new president, with 11 candidates on the ballot paper (a record number).
If one of the candidates obtains more than half of the valid votes cast, they will be elected head of state today. Otherwise, there will be a second round on February 8, with the two candidates who received the most votes.
The ballot confusingly contains 14 names – including those of Joana Amaral Dias, José Cardoso and Ricardo Sousa, whose candidacies were not accepted by the Constitutional Court ‘due to procedural irregularities’.
For today’s election, 11,039,672 voters were registered – 174,662 more than in the 2021 presidential elections.
The Resident will be bringing results as they come through this evening. All television news channels have been running ‘discussion panels’ through the afternoon and will be bringing more ‘discussion’, and ‘dissection’ of results/ what they mean (particularly for the centre-right government) through the night. Most are putting abstention rates this time round at between 35.6% and 43% – considerably better than the 2021 rate of over 60%. Curiously, outside Portugal media stations have already been giving forecasts of an outright winner today (which seems unlikely). The BBC World Service seemed to think that the ‘favourite’ for a win tonight is far-right candidate of CHEGA, André Ventura – which polls in Portugal have never indicated. Nearly all polls have put Mr Ventura as one of the ‘winners today’, but unlikely to win in the second round.
Source material: LUSA
