Turnout: 36.55%
About this election
The 2024 European Parliament election in Portugal, held on 9 June 2024, produced a remarkably tight result in which the Socialist Party (PS) narrowly edged the governing centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) in votes while the two were almost level in seats. Coming just three months after the knife-edge legislative election that brought the AD to power, the European vote underlined how evenly Portugal's two main blocs were now matched — and how far the radical-right Chega and the liberals had risen.
Portugal elects its 21 MEPs in a single national constituency by D'Hondt proportional representation, with closed lists and no threshold. Because the whole country votes as one district, the European election offers a clean read-out of national party support. The 2024 contest was the first major test of opinion since Luís Montenegro's AD had narrowly defeated the PS in March, and was watched closely for signs of whether the new government was consolidating support or losing ground, and whether Chega's surge would continue.
The new AD government campaigned to validate its mandate and project competence in Europe, while the PS under Pedro Nuno Santos sought to show it remained the country's leading party despite losing office. Chega's André Ventura pressed his anti-immigration, anti-establishment message, and the liberal Iniciativa Liberal courted pro-market, pro-European voters. The Left Bloc and the Communist-led CDU campaigned from the left. As in past European elections, turnout was a central concern, though it rose somewhat on 2019.
The PS won 32.11% and eight seats, narrowly ahead of the AD on 31.12% and seven seats — a near dead-heat that handed the Socialists a symbolic victory after their March defeat. Chega took 9.79% and two seats, Iniciativa Liberal 9.08% and two, and the Left Bloc and the CDU one each (4.25% and 4.11% respectively). Turnout rose to 36.55%, up almost six points on 2019, bucking the long-term decline in European-election participation.
The result confirmed that Portugal had entered a phase of exceptionally close two-bloc competition, with the PS and AD separated by tiny margins and a strengthening third tier of Chega and Iniciativa Liberal. That equilibrium, and the radical right's continued rise, would be tested again less than a year later when the minority AD government fell and Portugal returned to the polls in May 2025.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.