Polls mixed ahead of EU elections

Two opinion polls, two different winners.

PS wins

On Monday, an Aximage poll for Jornal de Notícias, DN and TSF put the socialists PS ahead in the race for the European elections (30.6%), with the ruling, center-right AD (26.6%) trailing behind.

The polls suggested that far-right Chega would take third place (15.5%) but with a smaller vote share than in last March's general elections. The liberals Iniciativa Liberal would take 7.5%, while left-wing Bloco de Esquerda (6.3%), Livre (5.2%), CDU (3.5%) and greens PAN (1.6%) would have smaller vote margins.

These results would allow André Ventura's party to make its debut in the European Parliament, with up to four MEPs, as well as the Liberals and Livre - both with one MEP.

On the other hand, the Left Bloc would lose one of its two MEPs and the CDU would fail to win an election, having won two seats in 2019. The Socialists would go from nine to eight MEPs and the centre-right coalition would have six elected candidates.

The margin of error of the poll, which took place between 17 and 22 May, is around 3.5%, which means that the worst possible result for the PS (27.1%) is below the best projected for the Democratic Alliance (30.1%). The uncertainty caused by this indicator is compounded by the 8 per cent of undecided voters.

AD wins

However, a new Intercampus poll for CM/CMTV, released on Thursday places the AD coalition leading voting intentions for Sunday's European elections, with 24.8%, and the PS close behind at 24.1%.

Chega, which occupied third place in the March legislative elections, appears well away from the central bloc. Only 12% of respondents intend to vote for the list headed by António Tânger Correia. It is a noticeable drop in relation to the last election, when the party led by André Ventura won 18% of the vote.

The remaining parties — Liberal Initiative (9.1%), Bloco de Esquerda (5.8%), Livre (4.5%), PAN (3.1%), and CDU (2.5%) — suffer a significant drop in voting intentions, a few days before Portuguese representation in the European Parliament was chosen.