Portugal’s Socialist (PS) party is “on the point” of overtaking both coalition parties when it comes to people’s voting intentions for 2015 – but Passos Coelho still maintains a personal lead over PS leader António José Seguro.
The results of a new poll led by Correio da Manhã newspaper and taken earlier this month show that the PS clinched 36.1% of votes (against 36.8% polled in March), while the PSD came in with 31.5% (a drop of almost 2% since March) and the CDS polled 6.1% (against March’s 5.7%).
Put together, the PSD and CDS are now only 1.5% ahead of the Socialists, led by Seguro.
Nonetheless, party leaders must be wondering how long the party should be led by Seguro. The poll question “Who would give you most confidence as a prime minister?”, resulted in 38.4% choosing Passos Coelho, despite the widespread unpopularity of government policies, and only 35.5% choosing Seguro.
The situation was very different only a month ago when Seguro was ahead of Passos Coelho, admittedly only by a short margin (36.8% – 35.3%).
As CM points out, the “people’s choice” of Passos Coelho comes at a time when permanent cuts to pensions had only just been announced.
