With the cycle of debates between the eight main candidates for the Presidency of the Republic over, it is fair to say that the face-to-face debates had a real impact on the dynamics of some campaigns, changing their course or confirming already expected strategies, even if the big picture which anticipates the outcome of the elections has not, at least until now, undergone any changes.
At first glance, the most notable change, judging by the results of the polls, is Gouveia e Melo’s apparent drop in voter preferences. The admiral arrived at the debates ahead of almost all opinion studies, but ends this cycle with a clear decline in voting intentions. The debates, it was already known, were one of the biggest tests for Gouveia and Melo, given their head-to-head debut and taking into account that they would have as opponents some of the most experienced national politicians in this type of communication.
The course of the debates forced the admiral to come down from his pedestal, especially because the aura of Covid-19 hero, which gave him popularity, is fading over time and today the concerns of the Portuguese are different. A more direct fight against rivals, even casting doubt on their integrity (as happened against Marques Mendes), now seems to be a path that Gouveia e Melo is willing to take.
Despite his military experience, this is not the type of battle that makes the admiral comfortable. And, furthermore, whenever there is a veil of suspicion there is also fuel to fuel populism. Therefore, there is a risk of strengthening the type of messages that direct rivals like André Ventura use to rally troops, with Chega’s leader ending this cycle of debates with intact intentions of going through to the second round of the presidential elections (which would already be a victory).
António José Seguro also had to adjust. In this case, stop wanting to please everyone and start focusing more on the socialist electorate (as the DN said) and on the useful vote that can be obtained on the left of the PS, a political field where the candidates supported by PCP, Livre and BE remained firm in the idea of not giving up on the game. Surely, as political scientists Paula Espírito Santo and Adelino Maltez analyze in DN, there is room to be more aggregator and insisting on the idea of being the only one with the conditions to prevent the election of a right-wing President can, in fact, bring dividends, both in useful votes and in attracting undecided voters (which will still be many, in the order of 20%).
On the right, with Marques Mendes increasingly leaning on Luís Montenegro’s government, Cotrim de Figueiredo holding onto the liberal vote (and trying to reach even a little further) and Ventura without any apparent decline in his support base (which in the legislative elections made Chega the leading opposition party), there is less space to embrace the idea of a useful vote in this first round.
As for big picturethat is, the final outcome of these elections, the debates did not change anything. On the one hand, there remains enormous uncertainty about who the candidates will be that will go through to the historic second round (which has only been held once during the presidential elections), thus making their performance during the electoral campaign decisive. On the other hand, given the dispersion of votes, it is increasingly clear that the candidate who is ahead in the first round will be the winner with the lowest number of votes ever (as the DN already anticipated).
In the second round, whoever is elected successor to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa will therefore know that he will become President of all Portuguese people, but the first choice of a minority.
Executive Editor of Diário de Notícias