{"id":443230,"date":"2026-01-19T10:47:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T09:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/01\/19\/portogallo-per-lelezione-del-presidente-serve-il-secondo-turno-sara-sfida-sullue\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T11:26:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T10:26:20","slug":"portugal-moves-to-second-round-in-presidential-race-the-contest-to-hinge-on-the-eu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/01\/19\/portugal-moves-to-second-round-in-presidential-race-the-contest-to-hinge-on-the-eu\/","title":{"rendered":"Portugal moves to second round in presidential race; the contest to hinge on the EU"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels &#8211; <strong>Pro-European socialist Antonio Jose Seguro (PS) or Eurosceptic nationalist Andre Ventura (Chega)<\/strong>: the race for the Portuguese presidency is shaping up to be a contest between the extremes of a political landscape that has never been so uncertain and polarised. <strong>The first round of the presidential elections did not provide a winner<\/strong>,&nbsp;and Portugal will have to wait for the <strong>second round, scheduled for February 8<\/strong>, to elect its president.<\/p>\n<p>The socialist candidate obtained 31.1 per cent of the votes, against 23.5 per cent for the nationalist candidate. The almost nine-percentage point gap&nbsp;leads experts to believe Seguro is likely to win the second round. This is also because the election results have disproved the latest exit polls: the socialist candidate exceeded expectations, while his nationalist challenger missed them.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Portuguese electoral system requires an absolute majority of votes to elect the President of the Republic; if no candidate reaches this threshold, the two candidates with the most votes compete in a run-off. Since Portugal emerged from dictatorship in 1976, there has only been one occasion when the country had to resort to a run-off vote to elect its president. That was in the 1986 elections, when the socialist Mario Soares won in the second round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The run-off election on 8 February will see pro-European socialist Antonio Jose Seguro (PS), who is leading by almost 9 points, face off against Eurosceptic nationalist Andre Ventura (Chega).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":443217,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[25816,31257,27179],"class_list":["post-443230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-portugal-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":443231,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443230\/revisions\/443231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}