🇵🇹 Portugal's politics and elections 2.0

[Former President tack50]

Is a split of PSD Madeira from the national PSD inevitable?

Beyond what Mike88 said, I am fairly sure such a split would be illegal considering Portugal has a constitutional ban on regional parties

[Former President tack50]

Intercampus poll for CMTV/CM:

Vote share %:

32.8% PS (-1.1)
25.8% PSD (+0.1)
11.9% BE (+1.2)
  6.2% CDU (-0.1)
  6.2% CHEGA (+0.5)
  6.0% PAN (-0.1)
  2.3% IL (-0.1)
  1.9% CDS (-2.0)
  1.7% Livre (+0.6)
  5.2% Others/Invalid (+1.0)

Poll conducted between 19 and 24 January 2020. Polled 619 voters. MoE of 3.90%.

Wow, big yikes for CDS. Is this the end of CDS? They would be dead as the dodo if they drop that low. May as well merge with Chega or PSD honestly.

On that note also surprised to see Chega that high. Any talks of putting a "cordon sanitaire" on them? Or would PSD reach a deal easily with them?

[Former President tack50]

Another interesting point from the polling released today:

https://twitter.com/pt_politica/status/1273963067458666496

Aximage: The CDS, if the elections were held today, according to Aximage, would have its worst result ever and would not be able to elect a deputy to the Assembly of the Republic.
However, the Intercampus survey shows an opposite trend, upward.

At this point I am almost tempted to say that CDS should just fold and merge into PSD. It seems to be on life support.

[Former President tack50]

But this creates a big difficulty for the center-right bloc in the future. Absolute majorities in Portugal's current party system are basically impossible. If the PS didn't get one in 2019, you can see the difficulty. So, this creates a problem for the PSD as they see that the only way they can get into power in the future is by negotiating with CHEGA, as IL isn't growing and CDS is collapsing. Even if in a future election, the right bloc gets a majority, it's unclear if there could be a stable pact if CHEGA becomes the dominant party on the right of the PSD.

I mean, it is not that hard to imagine an scenario where CHEGA props up a PSD minority government?

Granted Deputy PM Andre Ventura is a lot harder to imagine, but a minority government propped up by CHEGA is a lot more likely.

If PSD+CHEGA get a majority (but not PSD+CDS and IL), I am sure PSD would probably get into government. It would not be perfect but it would be stable enough.

The question would be whether some moderate conservatives do defect for PS in that case (and of course whether PS moderates to try and coopt PSD from the center)

[Former President tack50]

I think we need to put an end to this idea that the growth of the far right is Actually Good for the center left. What center-left governments or parties in Europe have benefited politically from the rise of the far right? Not Labour, not the PS in France, not really the SPD or the Greens, and it doesn't look like the PSOE has either. Their victories (and Costa's) came before the far-right really sprang up in their countries.

PSOE definitely has benefited somewhat from the rise of Vox, at least for now. Though of course the event they really benefited from was less so the rise of Vox (though it did make for a useful rallying cry for them) and more so the utter collapse of Podemos as well as the division in 3 of the Spanish right, which gets heavily penalized by Spain's electoral system

Similarly, the main event PSOE has been hurt by in recent times was the rise of Podemos; and much of their traditional base in Catalonia going secessionist and changing their vote to Podemos first and ERC later. There is a reason why Barcelona is one of only 2 provinces that have never voted for a right of centre party, not even in 2011.

Then again current Spanish polling thinks that while PSOE would still win a plurality, it would be nearly impossible for them to make a government (PP-Vox-Cs polling around 165-170 seats, with 176 needed for a majority)

[Former President tack50]

Parish map of the 2021 Presidential elections:



Marcelo won all districts, all municipalities, and 3,083 parishes (Madeira and Azores not shown in the map but he also won every single parish in both archipelagos). I didn't find any tie between any of the candidates. Ventura won 4 parishes, João Ferreira 3 and Ana Gomes just 2.

Marcelo is the new Jeb!

Is it me or are the 4 parishes Ventura won located in the Alentejo? The part of Portugal that is rural and very left wing?

Did Ventura overperform in that area of the country? (#populism ? )

[Former President tack50]

Is it me or are the 4 parishes Ventura won located in the Alentejo? The part of Portugal that is rural and very left wing?

Did Ventura overperform in that area of the country? (#populism ? )

Spot on.

Someone please make the "Friendship ended with Mudasir" meme with an image of an Alentejo farmer and the following writing:

Friendship ended with PCP

Now
André Ventura
is my
best friend

Here it is!

[Former President tack50]

I have a bit of a question on Portugal's policies regarding covid. From what I have seen, Portugal seems like the country in the EU that has the highest vaccination rate, and in fact has already surpassed what initially people thought was the threshold for "herd immunity".

Yet on the other hand, I learned recently that Portugal still has an outdoors mask mandate? I am very surprised Portugal hasn't dropped it given we did it in May

Any news on when that, or other covid restrictions will start to be lifted over there? Cause such heavy restrictions while at the same time Portugal leads Europe in vaccinations and covid seems a bit weird to me; and makes me quite worried about restrictions ever being lifted. If Portugal's 80% or so vaccination rate isn't going to be enough; what is going to be enough then?