Portugal will hold its third early elections in three years next Sunday, with polls suggesting that outgoing centre-right prime minister Luis Montenegro may have an edge in another hung parliament.
Montenegro triggered the snap polls when he lost a confidence vote he had himself proposed after the opposition called for an inquiry into potential conflicts of interest related to a family consultancy firm.
The 52-year-old lawyer has been in office since April 2024.
His Democratic Alliance had just 80 MPs in the 230-seat parliament and the inquiry would have dogged his government for months, distracting attention from policy.
University of Lisbon analyst Antonio Costa Pinto said that Montenegro was gambling that the election would ensure his 鈥榩olitical survival鈥� and perhaps even strengthen his position.
鈥楽eeking renewed legitimacy through elections was a risky choice, but a calculated one,鈥� he added.
Opinion polls suggest the results of the May 18 vote will be similar to those of the last election in March 2024, which produced a hung parliament.
The Democratic Alliance has 32 per cent support, against 26.7 per cent for the main opposition Socialist Party led by 48-year-old economist Pedro Nuno Santos, according to an online poll aggregator run by Radio Renascenca.
The far-right Chega party, led by 42-year-old former TV sports commentator Andre Ventura, appears on track to finish third once again, making it a potential kingmaker.
Throughout the campaign, however, Montenegro has repeatedly rejected any kind of alliance with the anti-immigration Chega, which critics accuse of promoting xenophobia.
Some polls suggest Montenegro could form a working majority with the upstart business-friendly Liberal Initiative, which is averaging around 6.3 per cent of the vote.
But as Corinne Deloy of the Paris-based Robert Schuman Foundation think tank put it in a research note: 鈥極nce again, the Democratic Alliance looks set to fail in its bid to win an absolute majority.鈥�
During one of his final campaign stops, Montenegro urged voters to 鈥榗oncentrate the vote in favour of the AD to return stability to the country鈥�.
He puts the blame for the early election on the PS and Chega for bringing down his government in the vote of confidence.
But PS leader Nuno Santos argues that Montenegro is 鈥榯he main factor of political instability鈥� because of the ethical suspicions hanging over him.
Questions over Montenegro鈥檚 business dealings arose after it emerged that his family consultancy was receiving monthly payments from a firm that has a major gambling concession granted by the government, one that is up for renewal.
Montenegro has denied wrongdoing, saying he has not been involved in the running of the consultancy, which he has now passed on to his children.
Most voters 鈥榙on鈥檛 particularly value this issue, as it鈥檚 not a clear-cut case of political corruption involving the judicial system鈥�, said political scientist Costa Pinto.
While Chega鈥檚 anti-corruption rhetoric could get a boost from the affair, the far-right party has grappled recently with several scandals of its own.
One of Chega鈥檚 lawmakers left the party in January and now stands as an independent after being accused of stealing suitcases from airport luggage carousels.
Costa Pinto said Montenegro hopes to have scored points by raising the salaries of several categories of civil servants and tightening migration policy in Portugal. The country鈥檚 foreign-born population has quadrupled since 2017 to 1.5 million people, around 15 per cent of the total.
The left has accused the government of pandering to far-right voters after it announced the expulsion of 18,000 irregular immigrants during the campaign.
Immigration 鈥榟as burst into the campaign with a potential gain for the Democratic Alliance, insofar as it reduces Chega鈥檚 ability to own the topic鈥�, said Filipa Raimundo, a politics specialist at the ISCTE University Institute of Lisbon.
