LISBON (Reuters) -Portugal’s ruling centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) took an early lead in Sunday’s parliamentary election, garnering over 38% of the vote with more than 10% of the ballots counted, official electoral data showed.
Early tallies can be unreliable as results from smaller municipalities come in first while ballots in large cities such as Lisbon and Porto are counted towards the end.
In the previous election in March 2024, the AD won the election with around 29% of the vote, leading to a minority government that collapsed a year later. To win an outright majority, a party needs to garner at least 42% of the votes.
The Socialist party trailed far behind on just over 23%, nearly tied with the far-right Chega, with whom AD leader Luis Montenegro refuses to make any deals, on 22.7%.
Business-friendly Liberal Initiative (IL), a party some analysts see as a potential coalition ally of the AD, was on just 3.1% of the vote.
(Reporting by Andrei Khalip, editing by Catarina Demony)
