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Click here to follow the evolution of the voting intentions of the Portuguese in our interactive graphics
If the legislative elections were held today, the PS, alone, was worth almost as much as the right together. In the Observador / TVI / Pitagórica survey, António Costa wins 40.3% of voting intentions, while PSD, CDS, Chega and Iniciativa Liberal add up to just over 41%. Compared to the 2019 votes, the growth of the Socialists is very much at the expense of a contraction of the Left Bloc and the great rise of André Ventura -more than seven percentage points- has, as a direct consequence, an almost absolute cancellation of the bank centrist in Parliament.
In a scenario in which legislative elections were being held at this time, Rui Rio would rise slightly compared to 2019, to 28.5% of voting intentions. Chega would achieve a potential result of 8.4%, becoming the third most voted political force. The Left Bloc would lose that position, without going above 5.5%. The coalition that unites the PCP with the Greens would reach 5.3%, one percentage point below the result achieved in the last elections. The Liberal Initiative would gain more than one percentage point in one year, reaching 2.4% of voting intentions. The PAN lost one percentage point, falling to 2.2%. And then at the bottom of the table, CDS, with just 1.8% of potential votes (and 2.5 percentage points less than in 2019).
It is worth taking the time to analyze two cases in more detail.
First, the case of the highway that directly connects Largo do Rato with Rua da Palma. It cannot be said that the decision to walk away from the PS and vote against the State Budgets for 2021 has brought good political results to the Left Bloc. It is not just the fact that Catarina Martins’ party watches from the bench as the Socialists scale the 40% barrier of voting intentions. Furthermore, and looking inward, the outlook is not very encouraging for the blockers: 5.5% of potential votes, down about four percentage points compared to the result of last year’s legislatures.
And how are these two processes related? The survey reveals that almost 30% of those surveyed (28.6%, to be exact) who say they voted for the Left Bloc just over a year ago now intend to yield their vote to the PS. That is to say, of the half a million votes that were cast in Catarina Martins in October 2019, some 150 thousand could now flee from the Bloc and go directly to the socialists. This is, by the way, the biggest stampede of voters in this poll. No other party loses votes in such an expressive and direct way to another political force.
But there is another similar phenomenon, not in absolute terms, but in the transfer of a large part of the electorate from one political force to another. To see it more closely, we must take a leap across the chamber.
A year ago, the party led by André Ventura entered Parliament with a 1.29% vote, corresponding to about 68,000 votes. In this Pitagórica poll for the Observer and TVI, Chega rises to 8.4%. And a substantial part of these votes (23.8%) comes from respondents who claim to have voted CDS. As the centrists obtained about 222 thousand votes in the last legislatures, this would mean that about 55 thousand of these bulletins would now have the cross in André Ventura’s party.
But this transfer from CDS-Enough doesn’t explain everything. To achieve a voting intention of the order of 8.4%, Ventura still strengthens its universe of voters with former voters in the PSD. In this case, 8.9% are voters who say they have voted for Rui Rio and now admit to having changed their election. More: because not everything is won for the PS, around 2% of the votes in António Costa, in the last legislatures, could now jump to André Ventura, if the elections were today. And if it is true that the Chega leader has argued that his constituency is transversal to the different parties with parliamentary seats, the survey also reveals that 4% of the voters who voted for the CDU now admit the possibility of voting for Chega. Only in the Left Block there are no transfers in this direction.
To close this chapter of changes in the direction of voting, it is worth mentioning that the strengthening of the PS is also done at the expense of previous elections in the CDS (4.8% who now see António Costa as a possible depositary of their vote) and in the PSD (3% of those who supported Rio are willing to change their color). PS and Chega have another point in common: in both cases, there is exactly the same percentage of voters (7.1%) who, having not participated in the last legislatures, now admit to having done so to vote for António Costa and André Ventura. Even more significant is the percentage of voters who voted for other, less electoral parties in 2019, or who voted blank or null (OBN), and who are currently facing these two political forces – 13.9% in the case of Chega. and 9.7% in the case of the PS. Only the Liberal Initiative and the PAN manage to win so many new voters from this band (both with 9.7% of the voting intentions of the OBN voters).
In a scenario of early legislative elections, the union of left forces would, at this moment, add 51.1% of the votes. It would, therefore, be a majority parliamentary front, slightly reinforced compared to the result of 2015 (when they accounted for 50.75% of the votes) and which would not be affected by the votes of third parties in the voting of the fundamental diplomas. But it is also a shorter majority, if we compare the electoral scenario of the Observer / TVI / Pythagoras survey with the result of the 2019 legislatures (now it is 1.8 percentage points less).
It is the PS, as we have seen, the party that pulls this value. In the analysis by sectors, and in comparison with the most direct opponent, the PSD, António Costa wins with the male and female electorate and, also, in most age groups. Only the youngest voters (18-34 years old) give preference to Rui Rio and, in the older electorate (over 54 years old), the socialist advantage reaches double the votes in the PSD: 41% of those surveyed in this range PS would vote, compared to 20% who would choose PSD.
A significant advantage that can also be seen in the analysis by social class. If the Social Democrats are the preferred party among the A / B classes (26% in the PS against 28% in the PSD), among the most disadvantaged, it is the Socialists who garner the most votes. In the lower middle class (C2), 40% of the votes would go to Costa and only 17% to Rui Rio. In the lower class (D), the division is made with 33% for the PS and 16% for the PSD.
A stronger left than in 2015, but somewhat thinner than in 2019, when the “gadget” ceased to exist. It’s on the right? If we add the votes of the PSD to those of CDS, Chega and the Liberal Initiative, the parties on that side of the chamber do not exceed 41.1%. Projecting eventual changes in the political cycle, we added the votes of the PAN and, even so, the sum did not exceed 43.3% of the votes. By comparison, when they emerged from election night, on October 4, 2015, Pedro Passos Coelho and Paulo Portas accounted for slightly less than 37% of the seats in the Assembly of the Republic. Now, Rui Rio and Francisco Rodrigues dos Santos would obtain 30.3% of the votes.
But these are, of course, scenarios. It is true that election night on October 6, 2019 ended without a solid majority in Parliament. And it is also true that the discussion of the last three budgets (2020, supplementary and 2021) showed weaknesses in the relationship of the former partners of the “gadget”. But, so far, and despite the economic and social crisis that has hit the back of the pandemic, there are no prospects for legislative elections in the short term. When (and if) that happens, it will be necessary to look more closely at the evolution of another part of the electorate: the one that now says that it is “undecided” as to the direction of its vote and that it can turn the needle of political majorities. At the moment, that proportion of the electorate is around 22% of those surveyed.
Data sheet
For 6 weeks (December 10, 2020 to January 21, 2020), TVI and the Observer will publish a poll each week with a minimum sample of 626 interviews. Each week the sample will correspond to 2 subsamples of 313 interviews. One of the subsamples will be collected in the week of publication and the other in the week before publication. Each sub-sample will be representative of the Portuguese electoral universe (not probabilistic) based on the criteria of gender, age and region.
Week 2 Post: The field work was carried out between December 10-13 and 17-20, 20202. A total sample of 629 interviews was collected which, for a confidence level of 95.5%, corresponds to a margin of error ± 4.0% maximum. The selection of the respondents was carried out through the random generation of “mobile phone” numbers, maintaining the proportion of the 3 main operators identified by the ANACOM report, when necessary, fixed numbers are randomly selected to support compliance with the sampling. Interviews are collected through telephone interviews (CATI – Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing).
The study aims to evaluate the opinion of Portuguese voters on issues related to the elections, namely the main protagonists, the moments of the campaign, as well as the intention to vote in the different parties.
The response rate was 55.03%. The technical direction of the study is in charge of Rita Marques da Silva.
The abstention rate in the survey is 56.6%, which corresponds to those interviewed who, at the beginning, refused to answer the interview because they did not intend to vote in this election.
The complete technical file as well as all the results were made available to the Regulatory Body of Social Communication, which made them available for consultation online at the time.
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