It was a historic night in Portuguese politics. Yesterday, Sunday 18th, the Portuguese people were asked to elect a Head of State for the coming half a decade. It headed to the polls to pass a damning verdict on the Establishment — and crushed, this time without appeal, the fake Right. The consensus-addicted, weak, managerial, and opportunistic simulacrum that had for decades pretended to be the Right while governing like a slightly more fiscally apt Left has now been revealed to be rotten, empty and useless.
For centre-right Social Democratic Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, the leader of this fake Right, it wasn’t just a defeat — it was a calamity and a serious warning that his time, too, is up.
This first round of the race for the Presidency delivered a political earthquake — yet another in what has, in recent elections, been a seemingly tireless succession of them. Luís Marques Mendes, the commentator-turned-candidate and former leader of the ruling Social Democrats, was the Government’s choice for the Presidency. He had, until recently, been the frontrunner. His defeat was, therefore, one of spectacular scale. He earned less than 12 per cent of the vote, a result that humiliated him and the Government while awing pollsters and analysts alike.
That the Socialist candidate António José Seguro came out on top and managed to qualify for the second round is, thus, hardly proof of left-wing resilience. He will face the second-place winner, André Ventura, the candidate of the national-conservative, anti-immigration CHEGA party.
Had it not been for the needless fragmentation of the Right — only one left-wing candidate achieved over 10 per cent of the vote in the first round, while four right-wingers managed the same — this shift would have become even more palpable.
The debacle was not accidental. Instead, it was the inevitable result of a political offer that just didn’t have anything relevant to say about the issues that genuinely and poignantly concern the Portuguese people today, from mass immigration to mass insecurity, meagre economic growth, and a growing sense that the country just can’t offer a future to anyone wishing to study, work hard, and play by the rules.
Mendes was a candidate of the 1990s fighting a 2026 election. He miserably failed to understand the political moment. He was, therefore, crushed by the ever merciless steamroller of history. His political career is finished.
Meanwhile Ventura beat the polls and smashed nay-sayers and pundits alike. He proved himself capable of consolidating the already formidable results obtained in last year’s Legislative election, keeping the share of the vote he then earned and preparing himself for its exponential increase in the second round of the Presidential election.
What is behind this realignment? The reasons aren’t hard to understand. The last decade was synonymous with a migratory shock unmatched either in Portugal’s past and elsewhere in Europe: Today official statistics admit that around 20 per cent of the nation’s population is composed of legal immigrants; over a third of Portugal’s population is now of immigrant stock, most of these people having settled in the country recently.
This enormous movement, the legacy of now European Council President and former Prime Minister António Costa, has changed the face of neighbourhoods, cities, and entire provinces completely, transforming once cohesive communities into multicultural dystopias. This avalanche hasn’t just destroyed fragile social balances: Through wage dumping, it has badly affected the economic wellbeing of the middle classes; a massive rise in demand for housing, too, has led to an inflationary spiral that has forced countless Portuguese to leave their homes and move in with their parents or children. Now the people have had enough.
Marques Mendes, meanwhile, embodied everything the voters had had enough of. He was the candidate of the commentariat and of the professional political class. Enjoying the blessing of the Establishmentarian Right, he nonetheless collapsed under the weight of his own inability to capture the moment and understand the public mood. His defeat wasn’t personal. It was the bankruptcy of a model. It proved that the old strategy of pretending to be centre-right while governing as a softer version of the Left just doesn’t work anymore.
The strong performance of João Cotrim de Figueiredo, the Liberal candidate who came third, also warrants commentary. His liberal right-wing worldview is a museum piece — an obsolete mishmash of social liberalism and economic globalism that seems like an unoriginal copy of Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 run. Today’s world is different. This is a time dominated by geopolitics, the return to borders, and the reclamation of sovereignty.
His result nevertheless confirms that the Right, in its various currents and broadest possible sense, is now hegemonic in Portuguese politics. Between Ventura’s nationalist Right and Cotrim’s liberal, young urban electorate, a clear majority of the electorate placed itself firmly outside the ideological universe of the Left.
With the second round coming in three weeks, on February 8th, Portugal is about to enter one of the most electrifying Presidential campaigns in the history of its Third Republic. Yesterday, even though Seguro managed to secure a ticket to the runoff, the combined candidates of the Left nevertheless failed to garner more than 35 per cent of the total vote. This is a disaster without precedent in recent decades. But, while the combined Right convinced 65 per cent of voters, the inability of the Establishment Right to work together with its sovereigntist competitors now raises the scenario that the Presidency will be ultimately captured by António José Seguro. If a country that has just voted by 2 to 1 margins on right-wing candidates ends up with a left-wing president, the responsibility will fall entirely on the Social Democrats and the Liberals. The time to unite the Right is now — and, if the Right does unite, it will prevail.
There is no other option. Refusal to close ranks behind Ventura is, in practice, to support António José Seguro and the restoration of the very left-wing dominance voters have just soundly repudiated. Anyone serious about reformism—about breaking the Left’s fifty-year monopoly over Portugal’s political culture, institutions, and national narrative—must understand that Ventura, unlike Seguro, is not the obstacle to change. Instead, he is its inevitable precondition.
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