After a campaign disrupted by the deadly storms which swept the country over the past two weeks, the Portuguese are once again called to the polls on Sunday for the second round of a presidential election. It opposes the socialist candidate Antonio José Seguro and André Ventura, leader of the far-right Chega party. The results will be announced in the evening.

Published on: 02/08/2026 - 07:18 Modified on: 02/08/2026 - 07:47

Portugal votes on Sunday February 8 to elect its new president. The two candidates present in the second round, the moderate socialist Antonio José Seguro and the far-right leader André Ventura, display diametrically opposed personalities and political projects.

Antonio José Seguro, a socialist anchored in the center, is the big favorite in the second round of Sunday's presidential election in Portugal, during which he faces André Ventura, the leader of a far-right party which has become in a few years the second political force in this country.

Since Antonio José Seguro's victory in the first round, the campaign has been completely disrupted by the deadly storms that have swept Portugal over the past two weeks, pushing at least 14 of the most affected constituencies to postpone the vote for a week.

Read alsoStorm Marta: floods and heavy rains in Spain, a firefighter killed in Portugal

Against the advice of André Ventura, who defended a postponement at the national level which the law does not provide for, the decisive vote will take place on Sunday and the results will be announced in the evening.

“I am certain that everything will be done to guarantee the security and normality of the electoral act,” Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said on Saturday.

Voting will therefore begin at 8 a.m. (local time and GMT) for 11 million voters in Portugal and abroad and screenings of exits from the polling stations will be broadcast by television channels at 8 p.m.

A latest poll published Wednesday credited Antonio José Seguro, an experienced 63-year-old politician, who however spent the last decade withdrawn from public life, with 67% of voting intentions.

To seePresidential election in Portugal: center left and far right will face each other in the second round

Abstention for “great adversary”

André Ventura, a 43-year-old deputy, could thus obtain 33% of the votes, according to the same survey.

While this announced victory already made him fear a demobilization of the electorate for this second round, the bad weather of recent days has pushed the socialist candidate to designate abstention as his "great adversary".

“We have to go and vote on Sunday,” he insisted Friday evening, during his last campaign meeting, after repeatedly repeating that the country would find itself “in a nightmare” on Monday if the far-right candidate ended up winning.

“There are some who are doing everything so that the Portuguese do not go to vote,” he said in an allusion to the request for postponement made by André Ventura.

The president of the anti-system Chega party ("Enough" in Portuguese), which promises a "break" with the parties that have ruled Portugal for 50 years, complained of having had to campaign according to an "all against one" scenario, which made his election "much more difficult".

Mr. Seguro won the first round three weeks ago, with 31.1% of the vote, and has since secured the support of many political figures from the far left, the center and even the right, but not that of Prime Minister Luis Montenegro.

“The true leader of the right”

The head of the right-wing minority government, who relies in Parliament sometimes on the socialists, sometimes on the extreme right, refused to give voting instructions for the second round after the elimination of the candidate supported by his party.

André Ventura has already reached a new level by qualifying for the second round with 23.5% of the votes and thus confirmed the electoral progress of Chega, a party that became the leading opposition force following the legislative elections in May 2025.

Read on the subjectPortugal: under the rule of André Ventura, the far right achieves a historic breakthrough

This far-right personality seeks to "consolidate his electoral base" but also to "assert himself as the true leader of the Portuguese right", José Santana Pereira, professor of political science at the Lisbon University Institute ISCTE, explained to AFP.

The next president will succeed the conservative Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa at the beginning of March, who has been in office for ten years.

If the role of the Portuguese head of state is mainly symbolic, he is called upon to play the role of arbiter in the event of a crisis and has the power to dissolve Parliament to convene early legislative elections.

With AFP

Keywords associated with the article

The content you are trying to access does not exist or is no longer available.