The previous government collapsed in March after Prime Minister Luis Montenegro lost a confidence vote in parliament.

Polls opened across Portugal on Sunday in their third parliamentary election in as many years.

Polling stations are open from 09:00 to 20:00 CEST (07:00 to 18:00 GMT), with exit polls expected from 21:00 CEST (19:00 GMT).

Confidence vote failure saw collapse of governemnt

Sunday’s ballot was called just one year into the centre-right minority government’s term after Prime Minister Luis Montenegro failed to win a vote of confidence in parliament in March.

The confidence vote was proposed by Montenegro when the opposition questioned his integrity over the dealings of his family’s consultancy firm.

Montenegro has denied any wrongdoing, and most opinion polls showed voters dismissing the opposition’s criticism.

Political instability for years in Portugal

This year’s election has been dominated by issues such as housing and immigration. The vote follows a decade of fragile governments, only one of which has had a parliamentary majority but still collapsed halfway through its term.

Opinion polls show Montenegro’s Democratic Alliance (AD) garnering the most votes and probably a few more seats than in the previous election in March 2024, but still failing to gain a parliamentary majority.

AD’s perennial rival, the center-left Socialist Party (PS), was polling at about 26%, behind the AD, which had more than 32% of the vote, in Radio Renascenca’s “poll of polls” aggregator.

It is unknown whether AD would seek to form a minority government once again or seek a coalition with the pro-business Liberal Initiative (IL) party, which is fourth in the polls.

However, IL’s polling numbers throughout the campaign have been insufficient for a potential alliance between the two to reach a majority of 116 in the 230-seat parliament, which requires at least 42% of the vote.

Far-right party gaining ground

The far-right Chega party, which Montenegro refuses to deal with, has been polling in third place at about 18%, similar to its result last year, but last-minute health problems for its leader, Andre Ventura, could influence the outcome.

After undergoing hospital treatment twice in the past week due to an esophageal spasm, he made a surprise appearance at his party’s final event on Friday.

In the last election, Chega raised its seats in parliament from 12 to 50, owing much of its popularity to its demands for a tighter immigration policy.

Portugal has witnessed a steep rise in immigration. Fewer than 500,000 legal immigrants in the country in 2018, according to government statistics. However, by early this year, there were more than 1.5 million, many of them Brazilians and Asians working in tourism and farming.

Thousands more are undocumented, and the outgoing government announced two weeks before the election it was expelling some 18,000 foreigners living in the country without authorization.

Similarly, a housing crisis has seen house prices and rents soaring for the past 10 years, partly due to an influx of white-collar foreigners who have driven up prices.

House prices jumped another 9% last year, the National Statistics Institute, a government body, said. Rents in and around the capital Lisbon, where some 1.5 million people live, saw the steepest rise in 30 years, climbing more than 7% last year, the institute said.

The problem is compounded by Portugal being one of Western Europe’s poorest countries. The average monthly salary last year was around €1,200 ($1,340) before tax, according to the statistics agency. The government-set minimum wage this year is €870 ($974) a month before tax.

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru

DW News