Portugal : The right-wing coalition leads the elections, and the leader of the leftists admits defeat

The opposition right-wing Democratic Alliance in Portugal topped the results of opinion polls after exiting the polls. While the leader of the Socialist Party, which represents the center-left in Portugal, Pedro Nuno Santos, acknowledged his defeat in the parliamentary elections, which witnessed intense competition.

The results of exit polls showed that the Democratic Alliance (right-wing opposition) in Portugal topped the early general elections that took place on Sunday.

The right-leaning Democratic Alliance, led by Luis Montenegro, consists of the Social Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Party.

On Sunday evening, Portuguese state television published the results of the exit polls.

According to the results, the Democratic Alliance won between 83 and 91 seats in Parliament, which consists of 230 seats, with a percentage ranging between 29 and 33% of the votes.

The coalition will have to form a minority government or coalition because it cannot obtain a parliamentary majority of 116 seats.

As for the Socialist Party, which has been in power in the country since 2015, its votes witnessed a significant decline, reaching between 25 and 29%.

It is worth noting that in the previous elections, which took place in 2022, the Socialist Party obtained a record percentage of 41% of the votes.

The Socialist Party participated in the recent elections under the leadership of Pedro Nuno Santos, who was elected leader of the party about 3 months ago, achieving between 69 and 77 seats in Parliament.

The far-right Chiga Party achieved the largest rise in the elections under the leadership of former football commentator Andre Ventura, who only began practicing politics in 2019.

The number of Chiga seats in parliament rose from 12 in 2022 to between 40 and 47 in Sunday's elections.

For his part, the leader of the Socialist Party, which represents the center-left in Portugal, Pedro Nuno Santos, acknowledged his defeat in the parliamentary elections, which witnessed intense competition.

Santos congratulated the center-right Democratic Alliance on the victory, which came by a very small margin.

The Socialist Party has been in power since late 2015, but most opinion polls indicated that it was lagging behind the Democratic Alliance since the resignation of Socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa, amid corruption investigations that have been underway for 4 months.