Portugal held local elections on October 12, 2025.
The surprise results delivered a stinging rebuke to the far-right hopefuls.
The Portuguese “bad boy” and greatest winner of the previous election, the Chega party (which surged to almost 23 percent in the spring legislative vote and caused heart attack to many European politicians) got only around 12 percent of the votes and won a mere 3 out of the 308 mayoralties.
In short: the nationalist bluster that had Chega dreaming of 30 city halls landed them in only three (two small towns and Madeira). By contrast, the center-right PSD (under new PM Luís Montenegro) grabbed 136 mayoralties (up from 114) and even won Lisbon and Porto and increased the PSD’s support. (PSD won 34.4 percent, PS and allies 33.2 and Chega 11.9 percents, respectively) The PS took 128 mayors.
No magic wand was waved over Portugal – voters simply took note of the work of a government that finally heard their problems. Thus, they stopped to seek salvation from new arrivals – like Chega, and rather voted for the PSD to continue its work.
As Prime Minister Montenegro put it, his government’s guiding purpose was “to solve people’s problems and transform Portugal to improve everyone’s lives”.
Not exactly a novel promise from a politician.
But it turned out that when governments actually try to keep that promise and work to fix housing, strengthen border control, or shorten hospital waiting lists, even “extreme” voters can get off the anger train.
European capitals are amazed (“How could this happen?”) every time a populist wins seats. Disconnected elites in Paris or Brussels gasped at Chega’s May result, as if voters were possessed by a demon called Élu Populaire.
Meanwhile ordinary people “only” suffered from high rental costs and meagerly paid jobs.
Just like they didn’t turn “extremists” a few months ago, now they didn’t suddenly become moderate: they just saw something strange in the actual European political landscape. An active government actually doing stuff, making decisions and showing progress in the right direction.
It turns out that propping up housing, tweaking the migration policy works delivers better results at polls than any green strategies up to 2035. Never mind the lecturing think tanks in Brussels; ordinary Portuguese were unexcited by abstract morals and identity politics.
The PSD-led government delivered a buffet of pragmatism: Montenegro’s team rolled out a so-called “housing shock policy”, tax cuts to coax landlords to rent cheaper, or to rent instead of letting the properties stand empty for years on end, credit lines for builders, and even a €1.34 billion EU-backed boost to public housing to quickly put 12,000 affordable homes on the market. Instead of blaming short term rentals and other strawmen as earlier Portuguese governments have done.
The Montenegro government didn’t shy away from the other contentious issue of Europe, either: migration.
Lisbon also passed a new immigration law touted to “ensure the right balance” – “neither with doors wide open… nor closed,”. In practice, the new legislation means streamlining visas and deportations – exactly what many voters actually wanted, without fringe theatrics.
Another proof that people are easily satisfied with “normality”, basic common sense.
Chega’s surprise success story in May, pretty much like similar success stories in several countries all around Europe was a story about real frustrations.
Millions of Portuguese faced a brutal housing crisis: rents have soared while pensions and wages stagnated. Thousands of Portuguese (cleaners, nurses, construction workers) echoed the rage, complaining about rental prices over EUR 800 a month in times when the average Portuguese earns somewhere around EUR 1200.
People surely cared about the caps of plastic bottles poisoning the oceans, but their lives were determined by far more pressing issues. Neither were they really interested in political categories or theories about which party deserved the label “nationalist” or “far-right”; they wanted a home and a fair chance to eat.
None of the Montenegro cabinet’s decisions was groundbreaking or solved the situation with the click of the finger: but they took concrete steps and portrayed itself as an acting, working government. Unlike in previous years (think 2022).
And voters noticed.
The lesson to learn elsewhere in Europe is simple: this magic can happen when politicians listen to their voters, instead of simply labelling every legitimate concernas “xenophobia” or “right-wing extremism”.
So, here’s the simple reality check: far-right wins aren’t mystical astrological events or the achievements of shady boogeymen, but are feedback from our societies, no matter how shocking it might be that “angry citizens” show up at the ballot boxes, demanding loudly that it was ENOUGH. (As they say it in Portuguese, CHEGA. Pun intended.)
Thus, cheers to common sense: in Portugal, good governance, or at least some semblance of it, id the trick. It’s the question of the future where else this could happen.
