Portugal's Election Gamble: How it Backfired for the Left - TLDR News
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- Опубліковано 31 січ 2022
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On Sunday Portugal headed to the polls in an election triggered by a power play from the Left Bloc & Communists. However, that move is now looking more questionable, with the electoral gamble certainly not paying off. So in this video we'll unpack what happened, why the left took such a major chance and why it didn't work out.
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The best English translation for "geringonça" is "contraption".
Usually meaning a sketchy one.
@@rafagd as much as I know, contraption may already have that "sketchy" connotation, as much as "geringonça".
@@jvgama THANK YOU!!! XD
Indeed
This video miss the most important issue of the portuguese electoral system.
PS only got 41% of the votes, but got 51% of the seats. Why that happen?
Because PS and PSD use their seats power to force a district elections circles, 22 election circles.
17 of the 22, has 10 or less seats. That means that any small party in that districts, only have a seat if they reach the 10%.
Its rare a small party to reach the 10%, because portugal its a mature political party system, and people knows who they are and dont change that easy.
What happen is, or they vote on their "extremist" political party, or they vote on the big centrist.
PS, one of the big centrists, theoricaly socialist, what its a lie, won a lot of votes from the leftists.
But what gave them the majority of the seats was the corruption of electoral circles that block small parties votes to be accounted if they dont reach the 10%, what its rare.
In the majority of the electoral circles, they only elect seats to the 2 big ones, and democracy are blocked the small parties are blocked, and all the seats are diverted to only the main 2.
Only Porto and Lisbon circles, basicaly, elect small parties, because Porto elects 40 seats, what makes 2.5% per seat, and Lisbon elects 48 seats, what makes 2% per seat.
2 electoral circles with 40 or more seats, allowing parties with 2.5 or less to elect seats.
3 electoral circles with 16 to 19 seats, blocking parties to elect seats if they have less than 5% of the votes.
17 electoral circles that elect 8 or less seats, that block parties with less than 12,5% of the votes to elect seats.
Thats why PS, with only 41% of the total national, won the majority of the parliament seats.
Portugal are not a true democracy because of this electoral circles that warant the majority of the seats to the only main 2 parties, being a close copy of the USA 2 party dictatorships.
Remember, in Portugal, democracy, the small parties, are blocked to their votes be counted if they dont reach 12.5% or even more.
Its so corrupt that we even have 7 electoral circles that only elect 3 or 2 seats. That means that you need 33.3% of the votes to be able to elect a seat.
Its the destruction of democracy what happen in Portugal with this electoral circles that only exist to block the votes on the oposition parties to be part of democracy.
Good video. But I wish TLDR went more indepth about what exactly the Left and Communist Party's problem with the budget was...
They demanded an absurd increase of minimal wage for our economic situation, remove all the troika rulles that were implemented the last time PS was forced to ask for external financial help, not the first time not the last time just one of the times, even PS knew they did not have that amount of money or they would have to decrease the "help" they have to give to their "boys", and a couple of other things. Btw they managed to give an increase to minimum wage wich will be paid not by the bosses but instead financed by the national budget... yes stupid I know.
The problem was far more then the budget. We wanted more organized financing in health system and make sure we could fixate more doctors in public health system instead of contracting outsourcing doctors. We wanted a change in labor laws that still have troika's hand in there. We want better collective contracts and more sindicalization so that workers can negotiate in a more balance position... We want to end gold visas and money transfers to offshore. This are just a few examples. Socialist party keeped voting against this in the parliament while saying to people they wanted to changed those aspects. They lied, so the voted against
That’s…..the point, tl;dr
They condensate major events into a 5-10 minutes video. Making longer in depth videos kind of defeats the purpose
The "geringonça" arrangement has been in place more or less since 2015, and since then the finance ministry has withheld 4 billions euros resulting in insanely low public investment (we're even investing less than fixed capital consumption so equipment is degrading and we're not replacing/upgrading it), often times the government would not fulfill agreements with the left, it barely reverted any of the troika's right wing policies from the previous government and in 2021 it proposed a budget that tried to reduce the deficit (which it still kept trying to do throughout a fucking pandemic) at a moment where the EU's fiscal rules aren't in place. Taken this into account there was a space for the government to either take big steps into converging with at least 1 of the left's policies or conceding and implementing 1 of their core proposals. Neither of these things were done, there was barely an attempt to converge with the minimum wage rise the communists wanted (850€), and the communist's core policy of lifting the time limit of collective contracts was also rejected (and the communist party has a big base in unionized workers), so here are 2 policies that would raise wages in the country, both from above and from below, when the government is constantly talking about the need to raise wages, and it said no.
The Left block I'm less informed on but if the government had either proposed an increase of investment to the NHS or the creation of a technical-auxiliary carreer in the NHS or the implementation of exclusivity contracts with the NHS (because a lot of workers have to work in both the public and private sector) then the left would probably have approved the budget.
The government either rejected these outright or took little to no steps in converging their progamme with the left's so the budget failed, take into account that they only needed 1 of the 2 left parties to approve of the budget so it's not like they had to do all of these things at the same time.
This video miss the most important issue of the portuguese electoral system.
PS only got 41% of the votes, but got 51% of the seats. Why that happen?
Because PS and PSD use their seats power to force a district elections circles, 22 election circles.
17 of the 22, has 10 or less seats. That means that any small party in that districts, only have a seat if they reach the 10%.
Its rare a small party to reach the 10%, because portugal its a mature political party system, and people knows who they are and dont change that easy.
What happen is, or they vote on their "extremist" political party, or they vote on the big centrist.
PS, one of the big centrists, theoricaly socialist, what its a lie, won a lot of votes from the leftists.
But what gave them the majority of the seats was the corruption of electoral circles that block small parties votes to be accounted if they dont reach the 10%, what its rare.
In the majority of the electoral circles, they only elect seats to the 2 big ones, and democracy are blocked the small parties are blocked, and all the seats are diverted to only the main 2.
Only Porto and Lisbon circles, basicaly, elect small parties, because Porto elects 40 seats, what makes 2.5% per seat, and Lisbon elects 48 seats, what makes 2% per seat.
2 electoral circles with 40 or more seats, allowing parties with 2.5 or less to elect seats.
3 electoral circles with 16 to 19 seats, blocking parties to elect seats if they have less than 5% of the votes.
17 electoral circles that elect 8 or less seats, that block parties with less than 12,5% of the votes to elect seats.
Thats why PS, with only 41% of the total national, won the majority of the parliament seats.
Portugal are not a true democracy because of this electoral circles that warant the majority of the seats to the only main 2 parties, being a close copy of the USA 2 party dictatorships.
Remember, in Portugal, democracy, the small parties, are blocked to their votes be counted if they dont reach 12.5% or even more.
Its so corrupt that we even have 7 electoral circles that only elect 3 or 2 seats. That means that you need 33.3% of the votes to be able to elect a seat.
Its the destruction of democracy what happen in Portugal with this electoral circles that only exist to block the votes on the oposition parties to be part of democracy.
One must not forget one thing: what we call "useful vote": BE and PCP voters panicked when polls started showing a draw between PS and PSD and voted PS en masse, the same with PAN voters. However in the right voters fragmented themselves between the far right CHEGA!, the neolib Iniciativa Liberal and only 29% congregated around the one party that could possibly rival PS, which was PSD. In conclusion: the left united, whereas the right further fragmented themselves, thereby losing the election.
But the power sphere has shifted towards right as all the right parties combined had got more seats than they got in last election , which means they were able to get some of the left voters
@@atulkumarsharma2645 I'd say the biggest reason the right gained more votes is because of Chega! as most of its voters were people which formerly didn't vote as they didn't feel any party represented them. So ya, about 7,8% of Portugal are hidden fascists who finally came out... oof. Also with IL many of its voters, most of them actually are young people, so probably for many it was the first or maybe second time voting. PSD on the other hand stagnated. So that's I think why the right gained more votes (and seats) and ironically lost more power
@@portugueseeagle8851 well it has become a europe wide phenomena where far rights are rising and in some countries they are struggling like afd has stopped rising in Germany (10% votes) and in some they are increasing like Hungary they are in power or are increasing like spain and sweden
Iniciativa Liberal is not neoliberal -_- its classical liberal (they want a weak state not a strong one, chega would fit the term neolib better). And I would sugestthat IL leans towards Social liberalism since they r still in favour of a national health system and free education
why is everyone going with this same train of thought again????? even if PSD had more votes than PS it doesn't mean that PSD will be the primary party/prime minister, in 2015 that happened, PSD had more votes than PS but the right parties PSD and CDS didn't have more than 50%, and PS choose to not allow them to govern (BE and PCP was already dead given they wouldn't support them...). Since the left had more than 50% and they were able to negotiate they ended up governing, AND they were more fragmented than the right was.....
It means shit if you are more fragmented or united, as long as a group of parties that represents more than 50% can come to an agreement between themselves they govern and not the "winning party", is anyone aware that this is how our system works? or is everyone going to continue to jerk themselves off with stupid arguments that were previously shown that that's not how it works?
"And if the Portuguese don't like one thing... is overplaying your hand". That describes us pretty accuratelly and is the defining factor that justifies the transfer of the left-leaning vote from BE and PCP to PS. Not only that but the polls prior to the election, that indicated that PSD had closed the gap to PS significantly (followed by the bragging of Rui Rio due to these poll results), led the Portuguese voters to give their vote to PS, fearing a right-wing government including the far-right.
This video miss the most important issue of the portuguese electoral system.
PS only got 41% of the votes, but got 51% of the seats. Why that happen?
Because PS and PSD use their seats power to force a district elections circles, 22 election circles.
17 of the 22, has 10 or less seats. That means that any small party in that districts, only have a seat if they reach the 10%.
Its rare a small party to reach the 10%, because portugal its a mature political party system, and people knows who they are and dont change that easy.
What happen is, or they vote on their "extremist" political party, or they vote on the big centrist.
PS, one of the big centrists, theoricaly socialist, what its a lie, won a lot of votes from the leftists.
But what gave them the majority of the seats was the corruption of electoral circles that block small parties votes to be accounted if they dont reach the 10%, what its rare.
In the majority of the electoral circles, they only elect seats to the 2 big ones, and democracy are blocked the small parties are blocked, and all the seats are diverted to only the main 2.
Only Porto and Lisbon circles, basicaly, elect small parties, because Porto elects 40 seats, what makes 2.5% per seat, and Lisbon elects 48 seats, what makes 2% per seat.
2 electoral circles with 40 or more seats, allowing parties with 2.5 or less to elect seats.
3 electoral circles with 16 to 19 seats, blocking parties to elect seats if they have less than 5% of the votes.
17 electoral circles that elect 8 or less seats, that block parties with less than 12,5% of the votes to elect seats.
Thats why PS, with only 41% of the total national, won the majority of the parliament seats.
Portugal are not a true democracy because of this electoral circles that warant the majority of the seats to the only main 2 parties, being a close copy of the USA 2 party dictatorships.
Remember, in Portugal, democracy, the small parties, are blocked to their votes be counted if they dont reach 12.5% or even more.
Its so corrupt that we even have 7 electoral circles that only elect 3 or 2 seats. That means that you need 33.3% of the votes to be able to elect a seat.
Its the destruction of democracy what happen in Portugal with this electoral circles that only exist to block the votes on the oposition parties to be part of democracy.
@@ricardoxavier827 sorry, although your points are valid, saying that Portugal is not a democracy is an exaggerated conclusion to say the least. There are no pure democracies anywhere in the world, parliamentary democracy comes with its own downsides that can be addressed and resolved, but that doesn’t take away the essence of democracy.
@@edipires15 we just need to reduce the number of electoral cicles, at least to the size of NUTS2, and in that way all my north of portugal outside porto, dont have their vote in small parties stolen in favor of the big parties.
Another way is to first apply the party-list proportional representation method in the distribution of the seats, and than apply the electoral circle rules inside each party deputie source.
The way it is, the vote in small parties are only safe only in porto and lisbon...
Outside our major 2 cities, its a 2 party fascist dictatorship.
@@ricardoxavier827 I wasn’t aware if that, thank you. Do you know why that is? Isn’t it supposed to reflect the differences in population of each district? And, if so, how often is it updated?
@@joaopinho2361 being or not being updated, this cant happen as the seats distribution system.
How less populated are the district, more votes are stealed from the small parties to give to the big parties, and in this way to allow them to have fake majorities.
So they can update each year, and this problem still happen.
We cannot have circles that block the votes of the parties with less than 10%. Thats not democracy!
At least, each circle must have 30 seats!
100/30=3.3%...
We must distribute the seats first by the total national votes, and than we can select them inside each party by source to create distribution source fainess as well.
Using the hondt method, or electoral circles, as the way to distribute the seats, and that block small parties, are not democracy at all.
Only Porto and Lisbon, with 40 and 48, allow parties that reach the 2.5% or 2% to access democracy, to have a seat.
We need to stop this seats robery.
Thanks for the analysis. A small correction, though: geringonça does not mean "rickety bridge" at all. It's a term that denotes a complicated and precarious machine.
Contraption is the correct word
I think all polls were extremely misleading and poorly done, some showed that PS and PSD were statistically tied, this might have caused people who were left leaning to vote for PS when otherwise they would vote for another party like Livre or BE, or not vote at all. I think the swing of left votes to PS were so PS wouldn’t have to do a center coalition. But this is my opinion based on what I heard in the past 2 days from a few people.
They could be accurate at the time, and actually the cause for people to vote PS in mass, people got scared when seeing the right ahead of the left and feared that Chega could be part of the government. Which PSD always said they wouldnt allow but PS's rethoric was always heavy on the notion that if they werent the government Chega would be in it, and people got scared.
THEY WERE NEVER TIED. PS WAS ALWAYS AHEAD.
Not the reason at all. The moment BE allowed the State Budget to fail even before it got into Specialty (and even after the President said that he would dissolve the government if the State Budget failed) i knew i wouldn't vote for them again, because no one needs a fkn political crisis on top of a pandemic! They did it selfishly because they got less votes in the Autárticas Elections and i'm glad they got clapped! We want humane and practical solutions that constantly increment the well-being of the population... we don't need some hot-head angst-teenager that wants to change everything at the same time, while not actually solving any issue at a practical level and in reality. The fact that this entire issue was mostly caused by BE still blows my mind!.. I genuinely thought they would know better by now...
@@tnightwolf concordo plenamente!! O BE e o PCP deram um tiro monumental nos pés
@@riskinhos they were tied because of the margin of error, when translated to seats, the polls showed that psd could get maximum of 99 seats and ps a minimum of 95, so there was a chance psd could win
Left Bloc and Communists: "we don't want your budget"
Socialist Party draining their votes: "fine, I'll do it myself"
I … drink … your … MILKSHAKE!
I DRINK IT UP!
Lmao
Well history tells me that when PS has Majority, the country goes bankroupt...
Videos like these are exactly why I follow you guys. Really refreshing to have a video discussing politics from a country you guys aren't personally living in. News should be freely accessible to all, no matter it's origin
Just one thing, any chance you guys could start adding subtitles to your videos? I'm not sure if that'll ruin your schedule, but it would be really awesome if you could :)
As a Portuguese I feel like the video doesn't say the full story. There are 3 very important reasons why PS won an absolute majority. The polls started showing that the right might actually win and it triggered a massive useful vote in PS from PCP and BE because the portuguese electoral systems benefits larger parties and they did it to ensure the right didn't win. The right tried to gain voters in the center but it failed massively because the portuguese right can only govern with the support of the far right. The final reason is that turnout was higher than normal, the portuguese people remember all too well the last time the right was in power with austerity and troika, a lot of people seeing the right could win decided to go vote PS who wouldn't otherwise.
Yet, they fail to understand why all the austerity, troika happened and who called the FMI.
By the time the PSD won the election, the economy was a complete disaster. And then, PSD won again and they highjacked the leadership with the geringonça.
so is "useful vote" the same concept as a tactical vote in the UK? Why didn't the right-wing all rally around the PSD in the same way?
@@Caroleonus It’s similar to the UK but not entirely the same.
Some polarization at the right and the desire to breakaway from the normal political establishment, but this is an oversimplification, the reasons are complex and would deserve it’s own video. Maybe the strategy of trying to win at the center left the right unprotected. But that was exactly what the leader of the opposition complained about.
@@Caroleonus Portugal's political scene is extremely complex and there are a lot of social , economic, cultural and historicl factors that make answering that question a challenge. That said and just as basic explanation a large segment of the Portuguese electors can be seen as "ambivalent " in either center right or center left, and will flock to PSD or PS depending on their own perception of the economical situation of the country, and that transference of vote is not hard to understand once one realises that both PSD and PS overlap in multiple aspects. The same large segement of voters tend to not only avoid the edges and so despite chega's growth a PSD +chega alliance may not result in a true net gain of voters : some of my own older family members that traditionally vote psd voted ps this time as they are not receptive to the influence of chega in the government while at the same time some of communist and "bloco esquerda " voters also voted PS as a response to the possibility of PSD alliance with a far right party.
To make things even complex, the portuguese "right" since 1974 has always been polarized in ideological terms and that makes rallying around PSD harder than for the left to kind of rally around PS . There is also the problem that the last PSD government leaded by Passos pushed too much austery policies ( something that even some of the PSD leadership silently acknowledges ) amd continued to push them while some of the other countries under the troika in similar situation were already losening up and had planned to touch in some areas that will automotically push voters out ( mostly healthacare, social security and schools ) and there is a level of resentment in regards that. In fact if one wants a shot at government it is better to not project any changes in regards the national healthcare and avoid talking privatization there as that is almost like conceding a defeat.
@@Caroleonusat this point in time the right wing parties, even if including the far right, couldnt hold majority of seats.
Center left alone got half the seats and if needed they would have made up the government including the dar left seats.
This channel deserves so many more views. Such great insights ty ty
IMPORTANT: for context remember that the Socialist Party is actually Social Democrat, the Social Democrat Party is actually Centre-Right, the Communist Party is more socialist than communist and the Liberal Party (IL) is economical (not socially) liberal
Just to add to one more reason why BE and PCP lost so many votes.
For the last 2 weeks of campaigning PSD was surging a lot on the polls ( some even giving a draw between PSD and PS). What we saw on sunday, was largely a tactical vote from the left voters. Votes coming from BE and PCP to PS, left voters were scared of a return PSD government so they ensured they wouldn't return.
Just look at the votes by district, compared to 2019 most of the BE and PCP lost votes went to PS, with an added PS voter mobilization of course.
still makes no sense to me. its not about having the most is about having no more than 50% that oppose you, they could have easily repeated the same results even with PSD having more votes than PS, and the PS party could have denied working with them like the rest of the left and as long as the left together still had more than 50% they could ally again, since both PCP and BE after noticing what they did by not accepting the budget, changed their minds...... it boogles my mind why they did what they did (not saying that I prefer or not the outcome, just that I don't see the line of reasoning). in the previous election of 2019(2015?)? PSD had the most votes but even with the other right they didn't have enough for 50% and the PS refused to work with them. Since the PSD was never going to try to govern with PCP and BE aswell, the PS party essentially "stole" the leadership since it changed agreements from seeing if the center right or left won and then seeing which of the other parties of the same side wanted to work with them or even the other center, to basically a "2 party" system with subdivision on the left and right but wouln'd work with anyone from the other side. Basicly now if it continues as it is is most just want left or right, and which degree of your side winning will it be, foregoing center parties (both the center right and center left)
it only makes sense to me to vote taticly in this case if you were referring to for example you need in your district 10% of the voters to elect each representative, and your favorite party only has 8%, and if its possible that they cant elect one you'd rather vote for a party which is not you favorite but you like more than others that has for example 9.5% since its more probable that it will be able to elect one instead than the first one, thereby contributing with your vote to a party that you somewhat like instead of the percentages that weren't able to elect representatives being divided proportionally by the parties that were able to elect representatives in that same district.....
But that still makes not a whole lot of sense, since the opinion polls occur mostly on the big cities of the 2/3 districts, and for what I previously said to make some sense you'd have to accept/be true that the polls reflect the opinions equally across the districts.., which you can clearly see they don't, with Alentejo typically favouring the PCP party and other districts also having historical differences in the voting of the representatives of their districts......
Polls definitely had a big impact. Bragança was supposed to be incredibly safe for Social-democrats and yet the socialists won by 15 votes. (pending a possible recount)
I think left voters (and even centrist voters that would otherwise abstain) were scared of the fact that PSD never ruled out a right-wing "Geringonça" that would include Chega. That's was Rui Rio's own shot in the foot.
@@vulcan734 No, it does makes sense. You need a willing majority, and Costa spent most of the campaign saying he wouldn't work with the left. It is possible that people took that info, looked at a growing PSD and Chega in the polls, got scared and voted tactically in PS.
How many leftwing parties can a country have?
Portugal: Yes
At least 5 with seats...
Hopefully all. I mean the whole idea of government is to look after the weak ones and distribute wealth of the nation better than the capitalists bringing the wealth in care to.
Nepal: Amateurs
@@NightBlado Must be why Portugal goes from bankruptcy to bankruptcy every 10 years or so.
But other than ps all are just there for name now and to split left votes
Nothing better to clear ideas and put things into perspective than to have an outside look. Summed up, you guys got it pretty right.
Ah! I now understand why Portugal's BNP growth is performing worse than Eastern Europe.
Yeah we are doomed... emigration is the only way out for the liberal professional youth.
you´re absolutely right!
note: portuguese parties have misleading names that makes you think they are further to the left than they actually are. example: the social democratic party is centre right and the socialist party is centre left
thanks, i got confused thinking almost all mayor partys were left
That is simply due to our dictatorship having been from the right, which caused parties to adopt left leaning policies and names in their beginning
Though they also shift quite a bit. António Costa’s PS is *much* more left-leaning than either Socrates’ or Guterres’, and if you ever get a guy like Pedro Nuno Santos at the helm it might veer off left further still. Especially considering how it grabbed quite a few electors to its left, and its pre-electoral agreement with Livre (Green Left).
It’s a phenomenon not too dissimilar from the shifts in the UK Labour and, in fact, you can clearly see the influence from those undercurrents elsewhere in Europe. Our liberal PS phase roughly matched Tony Blair’s New Labour, both in policies and timeframe, and the Gerigonça also mirrored Corbyn’s rise to the leadership (the difference being that the UK’s electorate just loves to shoot themselves on the foot, oh well).
@@Mainyehc In theory any leader could shift the party to the left. However, elections are won by somehow appealing to the center, so they'll be "beaten into shape" by our political reality itself. Costa had to turn left for pure pragmatism, if he wanted the votes from PCP and BE in parliament.
The last time the socialist party had a majority they went on a privatisation spree and culled the shit out of public education. I would like to know how you define "centre left" given those actions.
Damn that was fast!
results only came out yesterday or something lol
Its a united system. No regions with their own rules slowing everything as they want.
We only need 4hrs to make the full inside nation votes count. And are still manual...
This video miss the most important issue of the portuguese electoral system.
PS only got 41% of the votes, but got 51% of the seats. Why that happen?
Because PS and PSD use their seats power to force a district elections circles, 22 election circles.
17 of the 22, has 10 or less seats. That means that any small party in that districts, only have a seat if they reach the 10%.
Its rare a small party to reach the 10%, because portugal its a mature political party system, and people knows who they are and dont change that easy.
What happen is, or they vote on their "extremist" political party, or they vote on the big centrist.
PS, one of the big centrists, theoricaly socialist, what its a lie, won a lot of votes from the leftists.
But what gave them the majority of the seats was the corruption of electoral circles that block small parties votes to be accounted if they dont reach the 10%, what its rare.
In the majority of the electoral circles, they only elect seats to the 2 big ones, and democracy are blocked the small parties are blocked, and all the seats are diverted to only the main 2.
Only Porto and Lisbon circles, basicaly, elect small parties, because Porto elects 40 seats, what makes 2.5% per seat, and Lisbon elects 48 seats, what makes 2% per seat.
2 electoral circles with 40 or more seats, allowing parties with 2.5 or less to elect seats.
3 electoral circles with 16 to 19 seats, blocking parties to elect seats if they have less than 5% of the votes.
17 electoral circles that elect 8 or less seats, that block parties with less than 12,5% of the votes to elect seats.
Thats why PS, with only 41% of the total national, won the majority of the parliament seats.
Portugal are not a true democracy because of this electoral circles that warant the majority of the seats to the only main 2 parties, being a close copy of the USA 2 party dictatorships.
Remember, in Portugal, democracy, the small parties, are blocked to their votes be counted if they dont reach 12.5% or even more.
Its so corrupt that we even have 7 electoral circles that only elect 3 or 2 seats. That means that you need 33.3% of the votes to be able to elect a seat.
Its the destruction of democracy what happen in Portugal with this electoral circles that only exist to block the votes on the oposition parties to be part of democracy.
I was waiting for this! Loved the video
This is problem for any hard left party.
They keep asking for more and never concede so the isolate themselves as unreasonable.
They should have gone with what they had.
Their biggest mistake was not asking for/accepting ministerial positions back in 2015.
They went for this "Geringonça" (a better translation would be "Contraption") whereby they supported the Government in exchange of some policy concessions, while staying out of the Government. The idea (which I guess they thought was a brilliant idea) was to retain their "freedom" to vote against some less crucial legislation, thus preserving their main marketing point, that of being "revolutionaries". They did not want the risk of losing that clientele.
The problem is that prevented them from actually capitalising the policies that were pursued because of their pressure on the Government: every policy, even if imposed by them, was seen as a policy implemented by PS.
(Don't forget: Attlee defeated Churchill in 1945 because he and his party were already part of the Government and their work as policymakers could speak for them.)
By staying out, PCP and BE drained themselves out, and when they rejected the most progressive budget in ages, they came through as self-centred.
Tell it to the growing gap between the rich and poor.
The fact that they still have hammer and stickle in their logo is disgusting
I dont think anyone was expecting an absolute majority for PS all the pools had it tied with PSD, and with both of the parties not wanting to form coalitions and so not having absolute majority, the people mobilized and voted PS to avoid constant elections due to a deadlock. We can only hope this PS absulote majority is good as the last one bankrupted the country, but im hopefull that they dont commit that mistake again.
portuguese polls arent trustworthy, most of them come from companies owned or controled by PS members. that's why only the catholic university polls are the least unaccurate
They didn't bankrupt the country, clown
@@HahaDamn Sócrates and Mario Soares didnt? so what happened? because i remember the country being bankrupt after their rule.
@@HahaDamn Didnt? Short memory? Did you get 3 international monetary funds right after it? if that is not bankrupt the country I don't know what is....
@@bernardomacara6284 you know what bankrupt means right? When did they default on their debt?
I am glad I found this channel. I love it
Great video!
TLDR please do another video on the French election. LR candidate Valerie Percresse is surprisingly shoulder to shoulder with Le Pen. Valerie Percresse is definitely a piece of work. She managed to become the President of Ile-de-France, where left-leaning Paris is located.
A month or two ago, a French internet user dropped a comment on a news website or video got me laughing:
“Percresse est une Macron en femme.”
@Vladimir Putin I don't speak French, but I'd guess "Percresse is Macron as a woman."
She's a female macron
@Vladimir Putin the comment called her a female macron
I'd rather have her than Le Pen, I find Le Pen insufferable
@@mr.snaplles5964 everyone does hahah
Excellent explanation, i loved this one!
Just a heads up: at 3:47 the word "Crechès" means Daycare in portuguese, it probably went untranslated because the Brazilian-Portuguese spelling of the word differs from the European-Portuguese one.
I still can not believe that this was the result.
Obrigado aos portugueses por forçarem os gringos à falar "geringonça".
These guys are brits, not yankees
@@novedad4468 "Gringo" is Brazilian slang for any foreigner, not just Americans.
@@nunoraimundo it’s not just Brazilian Ik plenty of Mexicans including myself say gringo to just any foreigners
De nada compatriota brasileiro
@@novedad4468 yep, you are a morcão
Earing a British pronouncing "Geringonça" made my day (nice effort though, it is just a hard one ;) )
This is pretty accurate albeit one point which I think would have been worth mentioning is that another reason why the budget was such a hot topic was due to the EU's upcoming recovery financial package, the so called "bazooka", the government would need a clear mandate to get through their wishes on how to spend those funds, which are badly needed for the economy.
This video miss the most important issue of the portuguese electoral system.
PS only got 41% of the votes, but got 51% of the seats. Why that happen?
Because PS and PSD use their seats power to force a district elections circles, 22 election circles.
17 of the 22, has 10 or less seats. That means that any small party in that districts, only have a seat if they reach the 10%.
Its rare a small party to reach the 10%, because portugal its a mature political party system, and people knows who they are and dont change that easy.
What happen is, or they vote on their "extremist" political party, or they vote on the big centrist.
PS, one of the big centrists, theoricaly socialist, what its a lie, won a lot of votes from the leftists.
But what gave them the majority of the seats was the corruption of electoral circles that block small parties votes to be accounted if they dont reach the 10%, what its rare.
In the majority of the electoral circles, they only elect seats to the 2 big ones, and democracy are blocked the small parties are blocked, and all the seats are diverted to only the main 2.
Only Porto and Lisbon circles, basicaly, elect small parties, because Porto elects 40 seats, what makes 2.5% per seat, and Lisbon elects 48 seats, what makes 2% per seat.
2 electoral circles with 40 or more seats, allowing parties with 2.5 or less to elect seats.
3 electoral circles with 16 to 19 seats, blocking parties to elect seats if they have less than 5% of the votes.
17 electoral circles that elect 8 or less seats, that block parties with less than 12,5% of the votes to elect seats.
Thats why PS, with only 41% of the total national, won the majority of the parliament seats.
Portugal are not a true democracy because of this electoral circles that warant the majority of the seats to the only main 2 parties, being a close copy of the USA 2 party dictatorships.
Remember, in Portugal, democracy, the small parties, are blocked to their votes be counted if they dont reach 12.5% or even more.
Its so corrupt that we even have 7 electoral circles that only elect 3 or 2 seats. That means that you need 33.3% of the votes to be able to elect a seat.
Its the destruction of democracy what happen in Portugal with this electoral circles that only exist to block the votes on the oposition parties to be part of democracy.
@@ricardoxavier827 You just copying & pasting this everywhere?
@@senseiadam-brawlstars9465 why you are so mad about it? :) Why its important to you the way things are? ;)
@@ricardoxavier827 wow...that looks like the Tories or republicans do too...changing state borders so to get all the votes. But i do not understand..does Portugal has a First past the post kind of election..i thought Portugal used Proportional Representation like we use in the Netherlands ?
@@DaveVersteeg Yes you are correct, but only within districts (and those regions are geographically unchanged).
Imagine you have a district with 642696 people (Aveiro), it equals to 16 MPs.
So everybody in that district votes only for those 16, but the number of MPs are proportional with the district population.
Good to hear
Good vid
1:30 whenever I see a picture like this I'm always amazed at how civilised other nations' Parliaments/Assemblies are. They all have seats, desks. Telephones! In the UK our MPs have to squeeze on benches, there isn't even enough room for them all to sit down if they happened to all turn up for a debate, you see them standing at the edges for the big bills and debates.
And this thing isn’t exactly new construction, either (though it was renovated not that long ago)… But hey, don’t beat yourself about it, the Houses of Parliament are just *that* old, which is kind of a good “problem” to have. The fact that the UK is not yet a federalized, constitutional monarchy and still has a special chamber for, err, people not elected through universal suffrage, on the other hand, isn’t. ;)
In any case, I think I speak for all my fellow countrypeople when I say that we all wish your chambers get the respect and care they deserve, with the fast coming and pretty much inevitable restoration works. While on that subject, what’s the current plan, to start those once they get the Clock Tower done?
@@Mainyehc I assume so. They'll have to move out temporarily, will be interesting. I personally like the House of Lords, can act as a check against the excesses of the lower House, populism and the like. They're appointed by the lower House, and I think they got rid of hereditary peerages. So they're kind of indirectly elected.
Quick question, why is the Chega party labelled Far Right but the Communist party isn't labelled Far Left?
PCTP-MRPP IS WHAT THEN? PCP IS A MODERATE PARTY THAT HELP TO END A FACIST DICTATORSHIP AND IT'S THE REASON WHY YOU ARE FREE TO WRITE STUPID SHIT ON INTERNET
Guess it's implicit by it's name ;)
@@riskinhos Sorry but Communist isn't also going to allow free speech too. Look who is For and Against Free Speech, it's not the Left, look at the CEO of Twitter. How many millions of people died in Russia because of them? How many more in China under Mao? How can you justify this?
Everyone is biased
@@riskinhos The Portuguese Communist Party is the reason we can comment on UA-cam? Amazing, the more you know.
well we've had another PM from PS who vowed to promote discussion after he won an absolute majority. Turns out he is being prosecuted for corruption (putting it simple) in one of the biggest cases the country has seen. Costa happened to be his nr 2 at the time.
and both of them are best buddies, at leat were until the last interview from Socrates
Yeah this channel is a bit blind when it comes to the left's problems
@@maxfelgueiras3949 I wouldn't say that necessarily
The context given was only related to the very present moment
CDS, the right conservetive party haven't got any seats for the first time since the revolution, thanks to poor leadership in the past, so many of its voters went to CHEGA as well.
This election was also a political Gamble for the president who wannted to Change the political diagle from the left to the center (PSD and PS) but failed and left the president with lesse political manuver as the Portugueses constitution makes majority goverments extreamly powerfull
Well, in a way the parliament did move to the center, as the Left, the PCP and the People-Animals-Nature parties lost far more seats than those that PS gained. These seats went to PS too, but mostly to the Liberals and the far right. So if that’s what the president wanted, he got it… just not how he expected it…
A tremendous mistake here. The geringonça formerly disappeared in 2019 election because no formal agreement was signed among those parties.
The portuguese gave an absolute majority victory to a party responsible for 2 (sort of 3) contrywide bankruptcies and numerous schandals.
I’m a Portuguese living in London and down for postal vote. I could not vote as my postal vote never arrived and as many others tried to vote at the consulate, to no luck! Would be great to see an investigative video from you on this issue and how it could have changed the Portuguese elections
The foreign votes elect 4 MPs which always go the to the PS or PSD, they wouldn't have made a difference
It wouldn't, PS won the absolute majority without the migration votes.
The only difference it can make is record-wise. If PS get 3 of the 4 MPs from the foreign electoral circles, they beat the last largest majority of PS which was 119 under PM Socrates.
@@12345Granada yeah I know it wouldn’t change the winner, but meant the results overall. Would be interested to know if other “smaller parties” would have gained more seats or if the 2 main parties would just take those
How about a video talking about how different democracies deal with foreign citizens' parliamentary representation. Four seats specifically devoted to overseas citizens seems much more progressive than the USA or the UK
Not a fan of majorities, but I am a fan of stability.
A Portuguese L for the Left and Communists.
And a gigantic L for the CDS, the traditionalists lol
And a massive W for CHEGA
Considering the Left won the election and yhe communist party aint communist you sure are up to date on portuguese politics.
When are you fixing the Portugal pin? You somehow forgot the blue shields…
With almost 50,000 British living in Portugal it's great to have a concise update on the political landscape in a format that I can understand.
My Portuguese is ok for shopping and light conversation. All politics and bureaucracy here is shrouded in legal language. Many (including natives) choose to pay solicitors or administrators to navigate the paperwork.
More details in the future please.
5:25 "the center-right Social Democrats" that's not something you hear very often
A Portuguese innovation. 😁🇵🇹 These guys are members of the European People's Party.
Marxist-Leninists 🤝 Portuguese
"The Social Democrats are center-right"
@@knightshade2654 center right or center left same thing in the end
meanwhile in brazil: the "progressive party" is one of the most conservative in the country
I like how they thought. We want to be called democrats to show how much we love democracy now that we have one and we want to show we have a focus on social issues like good Christians we are, Oh, I know!, let's call ourselves social democrats!
Força Portugal!
I was waiting anxiously for this video!
We are fucked!
@@At3nT Yeah were fucked with Chega in 3rd, you're right
@@costa2k1 another FMI/troika incoming, minimum wage increase being paid by the state hurra!!! Price increases incoming hurra!!! hurra!!! Our debt going up and up hurra!!! hurra!!! hurra!!!
@@zoryan7055 Inflation and Public Debt was way higher under PSD 😂
@@costa2k1 wich one? the debt that Socatres sent to the next goverment?
Also one of the parties that normally stay in parlement called CDS PP is out of the parlement
Large government spending plans and more bureaucrats are continuing to make Portugal extremely business unfriendly
As a native and politically active:
The winner of the night:
- PS: gained an absolute majority even though not 50% of the votes thanks to the distortion provoked by the Electrical Districts. Absolutely no one was expecting this, not even the PM, who quit asking for an absolute majority in the middle of the campaign after most polls switched in favor of PSD
- IL: gained 8 seats after having elected only 1MP in 2019, and has gained voting share in every election since its creation in 2017. They set the campaign discussion with their proposals and were the main target during the weeks prior to the election
The loosers:
- BE: is the biggest looser in this election. They lost 75% of their MPs and were surpassed in voting share by IL and Chega and in MP by PCP also. It is one of its worst results ever since the creation of the party in 1999 and looses the position of 3rd political force. Their leaders and protagonists spent the entire campaign giving talking space to the far right and attacking the liberals instead of making a positive campaign
- PCP: also lost almost 40% of its MPs but managed to retain more MPs that BE due to its force in Electoral Districts of southern Portugal. It was somehow expected due to the slow but steady decline of the Communists but its loyal electorate had kept the fall not too fast
- CDS-PP-: as BE, spent all the campaign attacking other parties, especially the liberals (IL), even their TV prime time for campaigning. A bad and weak leadership and the loss of electorate for the liberal faction to IL and the conservative faction to Chega has taken CDS out of the Parliament. It's the first foundational democratic party to elect no MPs since the revolution
- PAN: I think few people were expecting such a loss, with just 1 MP elected after 4 last election, even though 2 of them have left the party since then. They were the only sorry to abstain in the socialists budget vote
Neither winner nor loosers:
- Chega managed to be the 3rd political force, but lost thousands of votes compared to the January 2021 Presencial Election and had voting shares lower than IL in the biggest Electoral Districts. They increase their MPs from 1 to 12, but had almost half the voting share they intended to
- Livre managed to elect a new MP with almost the same vote as in 2019. The MP elected back then was a black women whose campaign was almost entirely based on her skin colour and other racial issues. She was mistreated by Livre and eventually left the party few weeks after being elected. The new MP is the only known figure in the party and its leader since the foundation back in 2009
Could you please write the full names of the partes without abbreviations. As a non Portuguese persone it is hard to know which party is which. Thank you.
@@Jerry-io5gf sure
PS: Partido Socialista (Socialist Party), social democrats and left liberals
BE: Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc), democratic socialists
IL: Iniciativa Liberal (Liberal Iniciative), classic liberals and social liberals
PSD: Partido Social Democrata (Social Democrat Party), classic liberals and social democrats
CDS-PP-: Centro Democrático Social - Partido Popular (Social Democratic Centre - Popular Party), conservatives and christian democrats
PCP: Partido Comunista Português (Portuguese Communist Party), socialists and stalinist communists
PAN: Pessoas Animais Natureza (People, Animals, Nature), animalist
Livre (Free), democratic socialists and left libertarians
it could be better for Chega but going from 1 to 12 PMs is still a pretty good result.
@@ermin2248 it is, but much lower that internally expected and the voting share is less that half of what the líder defined as an objective. Chega aimed for 3 objectives: being the 3rd political force, having a voting share of at least 15% and electing 20 MPs. Only one was met
Native and politically active too here.
Would say your analysis is OK but disagree in some points:
-(IL) Iniciativa Liberal - wouldn’t say they set the tone of the campaign, at least not more than Chega (initially) and Livre (during/after the debates)
Losers:
- You forgot the main opposition party PSD - Partido Social Democrata. Despite polling well, ended up with another absolute defeat and it doesn’t seem yet to have a roadmap to go back to power that has been escaping them since 2015. Meanwhile further radicalization and/or bleeding to other right wing parties might occur.
-CDS/PP (Partido Popular, Christian Conservatives) - wouldn’t say they lost during the campaign but before that. The infighting and inexperienced leadership ensured they were on decline even before the elections were set and their vote and own members were defecting to IL and Chega (populist far right). This was just the nail in the coffin. Would like to remember though they were the most affected by the electoral circles design, as they had more votes than PAN (center-left/environmentalists/animalists) and Livre (European Green Left) but their remaining voter base was mostly spread between rural areas with few MPs for grabs.
-PAN (People Animals Nature) - it was a loss but not that much, they just went to pre-2019 levels. Would say that with increased pressure for tactical voting some of the people that allowed their growth to 4 MPs fell back to the 2 main parties. Also the novelty factor is wearing out at this point and their leader has not been very charismatic as the previous one, so that probably played a role.
I would then put Chega and Livre among the winners.
Chega - along with PS, they were unfortunately the big winners of the night. Sorry, but I think it’s dishonest to compare with last year’s presidential elections, which had radically different contexts and candidates. Comparing to 2019 they had the largest increase in voting share and MPs, and despite losing a bit of steam they managed to keep on the spotlight, with the media still falling for populist traps.
Livre - it was no small feat getting again into the parliament. Despite losing 2 years of visibility, after the infighting with their only MP at the time (that I disagree about the mistreatment, if there was a victim it was the party) that harmed their public image, and having to sue their way back into the debates, they even slightly increased their vote in a context of tactical voting and now are set to have a more stable mandate, with their best known face, their founder, and with emphasis back on their core agenda.
Also it was founded in 2014, not 2009.
After the results were known and his speech was given, Rui Rio (PSD leader) was so annoyed by journalists asking the same question over and over - wether he would resign or not - that he actually answered them in german😂
This video miss the most important issue of the portuguese electoral system.
PS only got 41% of the votes, but got 51% of the seats. Why that happen?
Because PS and PSD use their seats power to force a district elections circles, 22 election circles.
17 of the 22, has 10 or less seats. That means that any small party in that districts, only have a seat if they reach the 10%.
Its rare a small party to reach the 10%, because portugal its a mature political party system, and people knows who they are and dont change that easy.
What happen is, or they vote on their "extremist" political party, or they vote on the big centrist.
PS, one of the big centrists, theoricaly socialist, what its a lie, won a lot of votes from the leftists.
But what gave them the majority of the seats was the corruption of electoral circles that block small parties votes to be accounted if they dont reach the 10%, what its rare.
In the majority of the electoral circles, they only elect seats to the 2 big ones, and democracy are blocked the small parties are blocked, and all the seats are diverted to only the main 2.
Only Porto and Lisbon circles, basicaly, elect small parties, because Porto elects 40 seats, what makes 2.5% per seat, and Lisbon elects 48 seats, what makes 2% per seat.
2 electoral circles with 40 or more seats, allowing parties with 2.5 or less to elect seats.
3 electoral circles with 16 to 19 seats, blocking parties to elect seats if they have less than 5% of the votes.
17 electoral circles that elect 8 or less seats, that block parties with less than 12,5% of the votes to elect seats.
Thats why PS, with only 41% of the total national, won the majority of the parliament seats.
Portugal are not a true democracy because of this electoral circles that warant the majority of the seats to the only main 2 parties, being a close copy of the USA 2 party dictatorships.
Remember, in Portugal, democracy, the small parties, are blocked to their votes be counted if they dont reach 12.5% or even more.
Its so corrupt that we even have 7 electoral circles that only elect 3 or 2 seats. That means that you need 33.3% of the votes to be able to elect a seat.
Its the destruction of democracy what happen in Portugal with this electoral circles that only exist to block the votes on the oposition parties to be part of democracy.
@@ricardoxavier827 LMAO, wait until u hear about FPTP ☠
@@JoaoDias-et6cd i know and its even worst.
The system of UK and USA are the same of Belarus, and that says a lot.
the first time the TLDR is making a different form the left and the center right labor type
I’m Portuguese and I didn’t even know we had an election
Fact is, the left overall lost 70k voters since the last election, whereas the centre to right overall added 300k. No one here expected an absolute majority from PS. Imho, Left Bloc and PCP voters voted for PS out of fear of having PSD on government again, not exactly because they are angry at the far-left parties. According to most polls, either PSD would form a government from center to right (including Chega!) or would do a Central Bloc, that we had in the 80s and it wasnt very stable.
Voters usually associate PSD with Troika and the FMI in 2010-2014, which was a tough time for us. Therefore, even though it was the last PS majority that led to the external aid request, most left voters dread PSD, having preferred to give Costa a majority for a left leaning government instead of risking a centre one or even a right government, instead of voting for their ideology or their favourite party.
In short, I really hope we dont have to call FMI again...
300k votes. Sorry isn't that disastrous. Portugal doesn't have a huge population does it?
@@Ben-fx9kx if you are left leaning, you may consider disastrous, whereas if you are center or right you'd consider it great!
Portugal's population is a bit over 10 million people.
I was reading about Troika and it seemed like austerity was the only measure or else you face the situation Turkey is facing right now with hyperinflation. Issues arising from the 2009 financial crisis basically forced Portugal in a backfoot and exposed a lot of failed Public-private partnership projects that were racking in an immense amount of debt.
In my country, the Philippines, we had to bite the bullet of austerity policies after the marcos regime plugged the country into bankruptcy.
These parties' names make Portuguese politics sounds incredibly left wing.
When the Social Democrats are rightside on the spectrum, you know you're in a leftist society!
they are, the PCP is one of the only comunist party's that remained marxist-lenenist after the fall of the soviet union
Right Wing parties/ideologies might not be as popular when you've just reinstated democracy after deposing a decade long fascist dictator.
@@thanqol well good...
This is only a thing because these parties were funded at the time of the revolution in 74, literally everyone (including the communists which just have a social democratic programme) has shifted right especially in the 80s and 90s, same as the rest of europe. In fact I think even with the "socialist" party being in government for so many of the last 20 years I think it's impossible to look at portugal today compared to in 2000 and say that, besides on social issues, the country has moved left.
We have less public investment, less public companies, a lot more private-public partnerships, less public workers, less unions, it's easier to fire an employee now than it was back then, each labour reform took away more workers rights. I could go on it fucking sucks, I know it's not unique to Portugal and especially not to southern europe but things will keep getting worse and something is gonna give out sooner or later.
Good poker reference there 😂
It's the old adage, play stupid games get stupid prizes
Portugal is the most underrated european country! 🇵🇹
Liechtenstein: am I a joke to you?
Rest of Europe: *Yes.*
I am portuguese and I agree we could be far better than this if we could only fight the corruption and some financial benefits for big companies and corporations. Also the "euro" has a coin is a problem to our economy. But absolutely almost no-one wants to discussed this. The ones who brought this up is mostly the left wing parties and there is always some hostility saying we "hate" European union which is not true we just think EU is badly built and does not benefit the southern countries.
@@anafps23 the euro helped to avoid the bad habit of devaluation of the currency that plagued the Portuguese politics during the time of escudo
We are soo great that we constantly have to nerf ourselves in order to give the rest of the world a fighting chance...
Unfortunately today we're more of a museum for foreigners inside a eucalyptus orchard than a country...
I think the projected strength of Chega was the deciding factor. From the start, António Costa (PS) said there was no negotiation with the far-right. That means he even opened the door (if not explicitly) to a "Central Bloc" (PS+PSD).
By contrast, Rui Rio (PSD) never put aside the possibility of inviting Chega for government.
That motivated not only left-leaning voters to change to PS, but many centrists that absolutely reject Chega to go and vote for PS.
If Rui Rio had rejected Chega, he would probably have more votes, or at least PS would almost certainly have less, and a Central Bloc could be a solution.
Do u think Chega can ever have a chance? The idea scare me
@@fdivito12 I don't know. It's the first time we're in this position.
@@fdivito12 probably. In the future they might end up like Vox with 15% of the vote...
@@senseiadam-brawlstars9465 Sad to know that you've been contaminated with far-right populism 😕 Expect your public discourse to go down the drain.
@@_blank-_ Populism feeds on instability. Maybe the absolute majority will dry Chega's roots a bit. At least that's what I'm hoping for. Though, of course, right now they're galvanised by their result.
BTW, as all right-wing populists, Chega is all about projection: they started with a supposed platform against corruption in the political class, but, revealingly enough, one of their vice-presidents, António Tânger, is a former diplomat that was kicked out of public service because he accepted a suspiciously expensive gift (a yacht).
Antonio Costa is a capable politician however with the party's recent policies, implementations and attitude towards the current global economic trends caused by the 2019 events, will trigger an inflation SIMILAR (similar) to the situation PS conjured in 2005 to 2011.
Kind advice for you to start showing numbers and percentages during the video like the number of seats and percentage won in elections. It’ll be much better than simply mentioning these orally. Not only in the discount for promotion of your merchandise.
It would be interesting to understand the dynamics of the swing from left to right.
Were there left extremists voting for Right extremists or was it progressive, with left extremists voting center-left and center-left and center-right voting to the extreme right?
In other words, how many of the people who voted in Chega, have voted to BE and PCP in 2019?
It wans't about a swing of idiologies. Portugal has a serious problem with people not showing up to vote. In the 2019 elections, 51% of people did not vote. This year, 42% did not vote. The increase of people voting this year is what's behind Chega and the Liberal Initiative growth. As for what concerns BE and PCP, the people who would vote for them either voted PS because: a) They were afraid of PSD winning and making coalition with Chega (they did not want Chega in power); b) They were unhappy with the dissolution of the 'Geringonça' and the fact that those parties refused the budget leading to all of this.
While definitely some of the increase is influenced by chega's rise in popularity in the last 3 years, IL just got an injection of younger people into the voting pool, and a lot of the increase I feel is also due to the possibility of chega becoming part of the ruling coalition, so people were motivated to vote just to
left or right wing extremists are kind of the same. Nowadays right wing extremists tend to be more extreme than left wing, but they both gather their support from people dissatisfied with mainstream parties. So yeah, people who previously voted for the communists are now voting for the fascists. I am personally not that surprised. Honestly, I believe they are right, because these people don't care about freedoms, but they care about not being poor. Communists and fascists are promising exactly this, less freedom and a faster enrichment. It's bad on the long-term, but once again, why would the really poor care about the long-term effects when they're really poor right now. Many mock these people, but they're actually voting for what's best for them now, even though it's really bad for everyone else, and it's also bad for the next generations.
@@nydydn No, they don’t. That has been proved several times to not be factual through several polls and actual elections voting data. The transfer of votes between PCP and Chega is close to zero, whereas Chega had the best results where PSD had their worst results. Chega came from PSD, their leader ran with PSD several times. PCP is an antifascist party, their members were tortured and killed during our fascist dictatorship for fighting against the regime.
Please don’t spread misinformation online, you’re not even from Portugal.
@@dinis8271 they also did several falied coup atempts and say that North Corea, Venezuela and China are the best countries in the world, almost forgot about Cuba, they are not anti fascist they are comunist period, the other interesting thing is that chega is called extreme right all the time (don't disagree) but PCP, Verdes and BE are never called extreme left... standards I gess
Let's just remember that the last time PS had an absolute majority we ended up with TROIKA and one of the worst economic crisis until now. We are fucked.🙃
Fun time ahead!
It’s the 4th time we have had an outright majority in Portugal, not the 6th.
PSD twice, and PS twice as well.
I like how their hand was 27 off-suit :D the absolutely worst starting hand in Holdem :D
Perfect example of what happens when you take your policial dialogue too seriously
This video miss the most important issue of the portuguese electoral system.
PS only got 41% of the votes, but got 51% of the seats. Why that happen?
Because PS and PSD use their seats power to force a district elections circles, 22 election circles.
17 of the 22, has 10 or less seats. That means that any small party in that districts, only have a seat if they reach the 10%.
Its rare a small party to reach the 10%, because portugal its a mature political party system, and people knows who they are and dont change that easy.
What happen is, or they vote on their "extremist" political party, or they vote on the big centrist.
PS, one of the big centrists, theoricaly socialist, what its a lie, won a lot of votes from the leftists.
But what gave them the majority of the seats was the corruption of electoral circles that block small parties votes to be accounted if they dont reach the 10%, what its rare.
In the majority of the electoral circles, they only elect seats to the 2 big ones, and democracy are blocked the small parties are blocked, and all the seats are diverted to only the main 2.
Only Porto and Lisbon circles, basicaly, elect small parties, because Porto elects 40 seats, what makes 2.5% per seat, and Lisbon elects 48 seats, what makes 2% per seat.
2 electoral circles with 40 or more seats, allowing parties with 2.5 or less to elect seats.
3 electoral circles with 16 to 19 seats, blocking parties to elect seats if they have less than 5% of the votes.
17 electoral circles that elect 8 or less seats, that block parties with less than 12,5% of the votes to elect seats.
Thats why PS, with only 41% of the total national, won the majority of the parliament seats.
Portugal are not a true democracy because of this electoral circles that warant the majority of the seats to the only main 2 parties, being a close copy of the USA 2 party dictatorships.
Remember, in Portugal, democracy, the small parties, are blocked to their votes be counted if they dont reach 12.5% or even more.
Its so corrupt that we even have 7 electoral circles that only elect 3 or 2 seats. That means that you need 33.3% of the votes to be able to elect a seat.
Its the destruction of democracy what happen in Portugal with this electoral circles that only exist to block the votes on the oposition parties to be part of democracy.
@@ricardoxavier827 this video is about a red line that was too high
@@ZetaFuzzMachine look, the government provoke the elections. They knew that the budget wouldnt pass, and they did it with the goal of not passing to create new elections.
They got the fake majority and now they will do whatever they want.
@@ZetaFuzzMachine even the public tv was creating fear on the portuguese, showing polls of PSD with chances of winning over PS, to provoke the portugues to warant their win.
The public TV was used by the governemnt to create fear that gave them the majority to rule alone.
This Costa are a portuguese Putin.
The whole election was a huge gamble by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa in a bid to give the power to PSD instead, forcing PS and PSD to work with eachother.
Instead, it backfired and PS got an absolute majority.
A better translation for "geringonça" is contraption, since it means parts that don't work very well put together.
Not really relevant to the topic but I liked how your graphics person gave the Left Bloc and Communist parties the worst hand possible in Texas Hold'em: a 2-7 pair of different suits.
yes, i really like this detail too
Im portuguese myself, and an important topic in this ellection was the rally that costa did, in order to make people who voted in pcp and be vote in ps in order to solve this political crisis. It was because of that that they lost all of those votes to ps
Not only that, Costa took advantage of a pandemic and the fear of the people due to the rise of the far right and was able to get a lot more votes than what he otherwise would have received. Blaming PCP and BE for the budget crysis was only the beginning.
This was a really sad thing to see.
I was confused until I realised the title should have read How it backfired for the FAR Left (or Radical Left).
Not really, the title is still kinda true. The Socialist party is Center/Center-left and are in fact Social Democrats. The Social Democratic Party, is not really Social Democrat, they are more economically liberal/conservative (hence why they are Center/Center-right). Our political system is a mess, it has a lot to do with the "fascist" dictatorship, the names of the parties are skewed to the left because the population opposed anything "too right" on the political spectrum, but since then the parties and the people have skewed to the right
But a straight doesn't beat quad ...well anything...but *especially* quad aces.
Gerigonça doesn't mean rickety bridge, it's used as meaning like a mechanism
A bug factor that I see people missing here is that PSD was getting pretty close chega, and PS used the possibility of a potential psd-chega coalition to turn people to their side. If there's something most of the Portuguese population hates, its fascists
do they really? Chega is the third political force now
Well, the remaining 90%+ of the voters definitely hate them, they became the third biggest party as well because the other parties (asides from IL) are currently awful and barely any good compared to PS and PSD (although PSD is also a clown show with Rio as their leader tbf)
Define fascism
@@dimmadometv It may be described as a governing system as an alliance between ascending fascist elites and members of traditional leadership groups interlocked despite minor differences in a common project to set aside parliamentary government and crush 'Marxism' or 'Socialism'. Fascist movements differed from country to country (based on what worked best at the time for gaining quick attention and popularity), but this definition describes the past and present fascisms of Portugal and Spain quite well.
I would argue that not everybody that votes for chega is fascist some of them are just tired of the ongoing precarious conditions and corruption. What their voters fail to see is that most of the people belonging to that party are mixed in some kind of obscure businesses. But Portugal like every other country as fascist, they were hidden and now they have a party that they think can represents them. I don't like the party not one bit. But keep hostilizing them without another plan will only fuel division and those who vote in a protest will turn to fascism as well.
God save us Portuguese people.... God save us...
Many Americans across the sea feel great sympathy for you... We see your election results and shed tears knowing your country is going down the same path as ours, just at a faster pace
@@theanomaly2587 I thank you for your kind words. This really was the worst-case scenario for many of us here.
@@EnclaveEmily 🇺🇸 ♥️ 🇵🇹
Good video but it didn’t mention the percentage of people who didn’t vote.
please talk about the economic growth and the US raising interests rates in March and the position of ECB
ECB cannot raise rates because it will send southern part of euzone in big trouble.
@@kolomaznik333 how will they deal with inflation?
let me rephrase, how will they deal with the inflation, since they have so much funds to those countries? (bazooka)
A deeper analysis would show that the right wing vote increased by ~30% and the left wing vote decreased by about 5%. So this election results have a lot more to do with the electoral system than the people's will.
The IMF should prepare a loan program
How can you still have left parties and Communist parties in Portugal 2022?
If any Portuguese lived under a communist regime ,like Poland Chec Republic etc there would be no Communist Party foresure?
Jesus Christ you sound like a high school in the US that went through the red scare
RIP Chicão
Um esquadrão da cavalaria à desfilada não esbarra no parlamento não esbarra num deputado do CDS.
Being too ambitious at once can result in a greater fall when a movement stretches itself to absurd lengths
Well, Salazarism isn't exactly fascism; it's more akin to corporatism and authoritarian conservatism. The Estado Novo took some influences from fascism and other characteristics from conservatism.
finally someone smart
Em bom portugues: a merda e outra mas o cheiro e o mesmo.
@@Raddon A merda e outra, o Tito não era o mesmo que o Stalin
@@joseperez1308 O Estado corporativo, a idiologia colonial, o partido unico, censura, propaganda, culto de personalidade, perseguicao politica, idiologia conservadora. Facista mas bem facista e nao te preocupes que o povo, pelo menos a maioria, nao esquece.
@@Raddon
O salazarismo foi baseado na doutrina católica, o fascismo é uma ideologia moderna que rejeita Deus
Why wasn't voting via letter an option for the quarantined individuals?
because mail in voting is prone to fraud like what happened in the us. don't give them ideas.
What's with the Portuguese flag? Where's the center gone?
2:43 SEF is gone, they've abolished it after two or three members abused and killed a Ukrainian citizen. Borders are now done under GNR if i'm not mistaken, a military police branch
You forget to give props to the liberals in a socialist country that went from 1 deputie to 8
Vote for who you identify more with, not just because you think it's the lesser of two evils
Was it just the PCP that tolerated Costas Minority Government in the past? I thought it was their electoral Alliance CDU.
PCP clearly dominates that alliance.
Here in the US we have a saying, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” It’s exactly what the Portuguese Left and Communist party did. The election results were the answer for overplaying the political cards.
YOU HAVE ZERO CLUE ABOUT PORTUGUESE POLITICS.
This was sort of like last year in the US where there was some fear that the Progressive Caucus might tank the BIB and the Build Back Better bill (which, surprise, ended up getting tanked by Manchin and Sinema instead).
Funny, we use the same saying in Spanish:
"A caballo regalado no le mires el diente"
@@riskinhos he is right do..why are you screaming at him. This clip, and all the comments below say the same like he does. Why are you screaming to him ?
Lol, theyre communists, by definition they believe in progress, theyre always thinking way further ahead than the next election. For instance, they also control the unions which where suffering a lot while this agreement lasted. Now its time to give some strength back to the unions as theyre again free to provoke strikes and literally stop the country until they get whatever they want. Electoral politics is just one of the arenas the communists play on
The Portuguese flag is only Portuguese if it contains the Portuguese shield, hence you just use the old Portuguese Republican Party flag, get it?
The portuguese electoral system is pretty broken. Basically, because the there isnt a national list of seats but instead county level lists, 700 thousand voters had their voting be in vain, as well as giving PS votes by margins of dens of votes in some counties. This added up to PS winning with only 40% of votes but more than 50% of seats.
Thats bog because its broken, its because it was ourposefukly set up that way
Make perfect sense, you should have representatives of every District. Other wise you would end up with 230 members from Lisbon and Porto, that would only care about Lisbon and Porto, and Portugal unfortunately is to much Lisbon/Porto center already. But you can´t also have equal distribution of representative other wise Portalegre that have around 100K would have the same power as Lisbon that have 2M, most of the country would not be well represented.
Now the problem is that the media make the election seems like something National wide when is not, making it center around the Party leader, when most of us are not actualy voting for him. The media should focus on the list of each district a bit like in the autarticas so you know exactly in who you are realy voting.
So is not the electoral system that is broken is what the Partys and Media did with him that messed up. Is like given an IPad but using it as chop bord. The problem is not that ipad is a bad thing we are using it wrong.
We might see a change in regards foreing policy towards Maduro and Venezuela.
The portuguese left has been pretty cozy with chavismo.
I've been pretty cozy with your mom
Nonsense
Good video as always. One thing might have favored Costa was all the old people scared shitless about Coronga Virus... Portugal has quite an elderly population and most think the previous government did a good job in terms of health. You should also mentioned the rise of IL, that unfortunately will only be able to make some noise, since with the majority PS will increase their grasp of jobs for the boys and general corruption. If the very likely crash of the American market happens this year we will go bankrupt again, not this year but during the PS rule for sure.
Old people usually vote PS or PSD...
I don´t think so for me was a combination of 3 factors. The first and most important was that Rui Rio never was assertive in put Chega aside so many people even some ones at center rigth feared a coalition a senario where Chega must be considered and so concentrted more votes on PS.
The second was the general felling that BE and PCP, where responsible for the Political crises, that make no sense since we already have an Sanitary and Economic crise to take car of.
And the third tthe general feling that the rigth was opportunistic, because only start to atack on PS when the 'Bazuca' was more or less on is rails. So many people thougth that this budget fail was a move from the rigth to take control over the Bazuca
great video, with only some nuance missing. The left parties (BE and CDU) have been losing their base support since being in the PS coalition government. Its hard to be the party fighting the establishment when you ARE the establishment ("a luta continua!"). This was a gamble to keep their base so they wouldnt lose them to other fringe parties or even to the always loud extreme right. However this is far from appealing to the average voter, e.g. complaining about the highest increase in minimum wage as "too little" in a pandemic, causing elections in the middle of covid restrictions making people leave their house and costing the country millions, all while rolling out the red carpet for the extreme right (who should be their sworn enemy) to garner more votes when they could have secured a stable government for another 2 years. There were only 3 possible outcomes, everything ending up the same (in which case BE & CDU get blamed for wasting time/money), or they hand over the government to a right wing coalition (in which case all of BE/CDU's tantrum would be fruitless as they would have even less), or the least likely (although ironically poetic) absolute majority from PS, because of course everyone is going to blame BE & CDU for all of the above. I hope all this was worth keeping their base for, cause they made everything else worse for themselves.
A far left party being focused on bashing a far right party is absolutely pointless, since the voters of these parties are not gonna switch to voting one another. Bashing the government/socialist party is way more beneficial and is what they should be focusing on if they want to gain support.
@@outerspace7391 yes, one would think that normally, however its been seen across several rising extreme right parties that they are garnering disenfranchised individuals from even the far left, thinking i guess that these dynamic parties can "shake things up". I frankly can only see this as the reason for BE/PCP to have shot themselves in the foot and take the gamble on elections. Cause saying that you cant make change even from within a coalition government is just saying that you want to go back to the easy life of being the opposition because then you can just criticize and not get blamed
@@eva44940 except that Portugal did not have a coalition government.... there was just an implicit agreement that they would try to negotiate each budget so that it was amenable to everyone. For everything else the socialists voted way nore with the social democrats to their right than with the communist parties to their left. Thats certainly not a coalition government...
@@fgsaramago fair point, although that doesnt seem to have been how they were perceived by many voters. whether it was an official coalition or not, they were still seen as "in-cahoots" with PS
@@eva44940 everyone knew it wasnt a coalition, the word was never used, you only see it being called a coalition when someone it trying explain it to foreigners, even if its misleading. The more usual practise when there isnt a single party majority is that you have the runner up giving the same kind of parliamentary support for the budgets and thats not called a coalition either. The difference here is that it wasnt the runner up agreeing to pass the budgets, it was the communist parties helping the socialists, their natural adversary.
A coalition, as its genefally understood in Portugal is when you have two or more parties holding government positions and it entails those parties voting together in parliament for most things, which certainlu didnt happen in this case as previosly explained.
You should mention the new eu Parlament president I think that's important EU news!
A one or two seat majority is not exactly a win. However, the PS will need to make an informal coalition with at least 1 party to secure votes, should they lose their majority.
Doesn't matter
They have a majority till 2026
U re thinking up on the far future
While I personally voted PSD and think they would be the best party to govern Portugal at this moment, I would rather have PS with an absolute majority than another "Geringonça"
"Although the party name suggests that the PSD is a social-democratic party, this is not the case. The founders of the PPD (predecessor of the PSD) planned in 1974 to establish a center-left party, but the party soon developed in a centrist, later center-right direction. In 1975/1976 the PSD was not admitted to the Socialist International, because the social-democratic ideas in the traditional left sense were lacking. Certainly, under Aníbal Cavaco Silva, the party moved to the right in the 1980s.
In 2006 the party can be described as moderately conservative, slightly populist, liberal, and social.
The party slogan reads: "Freedom, Equality, and Solidarity." "
Never believe such parties... social democrats (PS) are the right solution. See for example Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The Netherlands felt for the same crap with center-right coalitions.
You would be a unicorn in America. We have devolved to accusing everyone in the other party of being demons, I mean that literally.
@@tmpcox I don't think you are right, but we will see what the socialists do in the next four years... Calling social democrats a party who accepted a coalition with two far-left parties is a bit of stretch don't you think...
Well whatever, you just say that because you don't live here, because most of us who do either emigrate to other countries or just accept low salaries.
I was hoping Portugal would get someone from the north this time around, not for the north/south bickering but for the often said “industrial north”. Industry (and foreign investment on it) needs a higher attention, in my opinion.
hmm.. idk about that, personally im left leaning, militant ps, and i'd rather have a geringonça, with a signed deal because more people would be represented, costa says that he's open to talk with the other partys but come on... saying they wont do as they wish seems naive to me
Thanks for explaining our country to the wider audience, but you're missing a lot of subtext.
PS, despite being in a de facto coalition with PCP and BE (way further left leaning parties that support stuff like nationalising services and leaving NATO), have for the past 6 years governed pretty centrally, with very few reforms. This became more and more untenable for PCP and BE, who were starting to lack a justification to their voters why were they letting these budgets pass, and also risking having their base voters gradually being absorbed by PS (if you don't distinguish yourself from the main party in a coalition, how can you rally voters?). The 2022 budget wasn't really any clear further left than the ones before, and any attempts by PCP and BE to negotiate it their way were persistently dismissed by PS - which led many analysts to conclude this was PS attempting to cause a crisis on purpose, making it look like PCP and BE's fault, to try to gain the absolute majority that they eventually did gain.
100% agree with you!
This is what BE and CDU used to justify the vote against the buget, but it was such a lie that the portuguese just saw trough it. The 2022 budget was the most leftist budget since 1974. Im so glad BE and Pcp payed for their mistake and I wished that they learned from it but considering their after elections speeches, they learned nothing. Maybe in 4 years instead of 5 seats they'll have none. Listen to the people.
@@addabboo It was not a lie, PS hasn't accepted any contribution of PCP and BE to que Anual Budget, to force the left parties to vote against it. It worked, that's a fact.
@@addabboo "The 2022 budget was the most leftist budget since 1974." This is simple not true.
@@rodrigofpteixeira So free daycare for children a cdu proposal was in the budget, the biggest raise of the minimum wage was there too, raising pensions and help for fathers and mothers, also the biggest raise is what? Please, portuguese did not fell for the BE and CDu Excuses for votting against a budget that would help people. That is the biggest reason for their bad results. Listen to the people. Even before the vote, online, people were begging those 2 parties to abstain and then during discussions the BE and CDu could ask for some changes in speciality. Also BE and CDu voted like all the right wing parliament, knowing that election would happen as warned by the president, they thought that maybe it was time for a right wing government so they could benefit from the shit they would do, just like Bernie or bust in the US. People weren't fooled.
About overplaying your hand: In Portuguese we have the saying DAR UM PASSO MAIOR DO QUE A PERNA. It LITERALLY means TO MAKE A STEP BIGGER THAN THE LEG. I think the English equivalent is TO BYTE MORE THAN ONE CAN CHEW.
the 20 national electoral circles that ignored the portuguese citizens votes, that didnt elect seats:
Viana - 127.040 votes, 30.191 ignored. 24%
Braga - 494.512 votes, 64.534 ignored. 13%
Vila Real - 105.319 votes, 19.695 ignored. 19%
Bragança - 65.742 votes, 12.767 ignored. 19%
Aveiro - 364.858 votes, 69.906 ignored. 19%
Viseu - 184.444 votes, 39.914 ignored. 22%
Guarda - 76.901 votes, 16.440 ignored. 21%
Coimbra - 215.122 votes, 55.144 ignored. 26%
C. Branco - 95.743 votes, 23.884 ignored. 25%
Leiria - 235.781 votes, 50.832 ignored. 22%
Santarém - 218.192 votes, 45.879 ignored. 21%
Setúbal - 433.217 votes, 35.338 ignored. 8%
Portalegre - 53.528 votes, 28.257 ignored. 53%
Évora - 78.940 votes, 27.345 ignored. 35%
Beja - 67.530 votes, 25.555 ignored. 38%
Algarve - 194.967 votes, 45.768 ignored. 23%
Açores - 84.084 votes, 19.539 ignored. 23%
Madeira - 127.111 votes, 36.473 ignored. 29%
Porto - 984.800 votes, 74.836 ignored. 8%
Lisboa - 1.181.874 votes, 60.324 ignored. 5%
In 20 electoral circles, only 4 didnt had more than 19% of the votes totally ignored, and stoled.
The majority of the portuguese outside that 4 districts, are not aware that their votes have more than 19% to 53% of chances of being totally ignored.
The leaders of the gangs PS and PSD, does cartel to keep the system that ignores the votes of the portuguese.
@@ricardoxavier827 What has that to do with my comment?!
@@Sergio_Loureiro its to improve the visibility of my message to everyones read.
All the tech american companies, plays with our visibility to hide what they dont want to be seen.
When i coment directly, no ones react. When i do the same comment inside the others comment, magic happens and people react....
@@ricardoxavier827 This is stupid. Most likely it was me the only person that has seen your message. If you commented it outside my thread, more people would have seen it.
You mean the Far-Left failed..
the Center-Left PS won their bet.
I’m more of a PSD guy (Centre-Right) and gotta give PS credit for winning their play