The last Intercampus poll for Correio da Manhã, released on Thursday morning, shows that the AD has widened its lead over the PS (29.3% against 23.3%). Since the last Intercampus poll, the AD has increased in popularity by 5%, and the Socialists by 0.9%, writes Correio da Manhã, which jointly commissioned the poll with its sister outlet CMTV.
According to the barometer, far-right CHEGA drops to 15.6%, which is still more than double its result in 2022, and remains the third political force. The biggest increase is that of Livre, from 2.7% to 4.3%, which overtakes the greens PAN and communists CDU, who have lost ground, going from February’s 2.7% to 2.1%.
Liberals (IL) have also gone from 6.8% of the vote, to 7.8%. Bloco de Esquerda has essentially stayed where it was in terms of voting intentions, increasing by 0.1% (from 5.4% to 5.5%).
CM’s report adds that “beyond the clear widening of the gap between AD and PS, the March poll shows a significant increase of the right. It currently presents 52.7% of voting intentions (when it was 47.4%), against 35.2% o the left (it was 33.2%).
Other details are a “slight increase in voting intentions for other parties, which are not the eight that currently have a presence in parliament” – and the finding: “There are now 87.4% of the electorate that say they are going to vote, against 86.3% in February”.
As for the high number of undecided, this new poll suggests that too is falling. “In February, 21% of voters did not know who they were going to vote for – a number that has fallen to 13% in March.
Plus “the numbers who said a month ago that they would not vote are now 6.9%, against 12.4% a month ago”.
Finally, a question on the image of the various party leaders put AD’s Luís Montenegro in the lead with 3%, followed by LIVRE’s Rui Tavares (2.9%), IL’s Rui Rocha (2-9%), PAN’s Inês Sousa Real (2.8%) and only then PS Socialist’s Pedro Nuno Santos (2.6%).
CHEGA’s André Ventura was the leader who polled the ‘least’ when it came to image (2.3%).
In another poll released later on Thursday carried out by the Catholic University's Center for Studies and Opinion Polls (CESOP) for PÚBLICO, RTP and Antena 1, the AD hikes its lead over the PS to 6 percentage points, although both have risen by one percentage point each in this week's poll, the last of the current election campaign.
But if last week there was a tie between the left and right blocs - each of the blocs had 39% - now the left is slightly ahead. This is because PS, Bloco de Esquerda, CDU (PCP-PEV alliance) and Livre together have 41%, while AD (PSD/CDS-PPPM) and Iniciativa Liberal together have 40%.
However, this majority based on voting intentions has no direct correspondence with Cesop's distribution of MPs based on territorial criteria, according to which the left, even in the best case scenario, has no more than 96 MPs, below AD's best case scenario (98). This distribution also shows that AD and IL have, in the best scenario, 108 MPs (two more than a week ago), so they are still far from the minimum of 116 MPs that guarantees an absolute majority, which would only be possible if the right also included Chega.