Could André Ventura become Portugal's next Prime Minister?

A Right-Wing Revolution Redraws Portugal’s Political Map

Portugal’s long-standing political stability, once a European exception, is fracturing under the weight of a populist surge. The nation's political map is being dramatically redrawn, with the far-right Chega party not only cementing its place in the mainstream but overtaking the Socialist Party to become the country's second-largest political force. In the corridors of São Bento Palace, Prime Minister Luís Montenegro and his center-right Democratic Alliance (AD) government are navigating a treacherous path. They are tightening immigration rules and launching economic appeals to young voters in a direct attempt to counter the populist tide. Yet, every move is scrutinized and attacked by an emboldened André Ventura, Chega’s charismatic leader.

Against this backdrop of heightened public anxiety over housing, security, and national identity, immigration and even the country’s small network of mosques have become headline fixtures. Ventura, enjoying the strategic freedom of opposition, relentlessly presses his anti-establishment message. However, a calculated rightward shift by Montenegro on key issues could narrow the political space Ventura needs to appear as a credible prime minister-in-waiting. A comparison with Giorgia Meloni’s successful path to power in Italy reveals both the potential for a Ventura premiership and the unique hurdles that lie ahead on the path to governing Portugal.

Chega’s Unprecedented Ascent

To understand the current political tremor, one must appreciate the sheer velocity of Chega's rise. For decades following the 1974 Carnation Revolution, Portuguese politics was characterized by a stable, if sometimes stagnant, two-party system dominated by the center-left Socialist Party (PS) and the center-right Social Democratic Party (PSD), which now leads the AD coalition. The far-right was a marginal, almost non-existent force. This paradigm has been shattered. In the snap election of May 18, 2025, Chega’s vote share exploded to 22.8 percent, securing an astonishing 60 seats in the 230-seat Assembly of the Republic. This marked a meteoric leap from the 7.2 percent it achieved in 2022 and its single-seat debut in 2019.

This result transformed Chega from a vocal fringe party into the largest opposition bloc in parliament, eclipsing a Socialist Party still reeling from the scandals that triggered the government's collapse. Poll trackers have since validated this new reality, consistently placing the party between 23 and 26 percent, comfortably ahead of the Socialists and often within ten percentage points of Montenegro’s governing AD. This seismic shift has been noted by international observers, from the Financial Times to the Atlantic Council, who correctly identify that Portugal’s era of "exceptionalism" from the European populist wave is definitively over. The party's success is rooted in a deep well of voter disillusionment with the political establishment, fuelled by persistent corruption scandals, a severe housing crisis that has priced out a generation of young people, and stagnant wages that belie headline GDP growth.

The Strategic Luxury of Opposition

As Leader of the Opposition, André Ventura currently occupies the most powerful political position outside of the government itself. This unique positioning affords him a significant strategic advantage: he can critique every budget line, amplify every cabinet scandal, and attack every policy U-turn without bearing any responsibility for the day-to-day failures and messy compromises of governance. This is a luxury Prime Minister Montenegro forfeited the moment he formed his fragile minority government. Every decision Montenegro makes—or fails to make—becomes ammunition for Ventura.

This dynamic has been on full display. Chega vehemently opposed the government's 2025 budget proposal, framing it as insufficient to address the cost-of-living crisis. More cunningly, the party supported the government’s stricter new immigration bill through its initial committee stages before ultimately voting against the final version, arguing that it did not go far enough. This calculated manoeuvre allowed Ventura to claim a partial victory by pushing the government to the right while simultaneously reinforcing his image as the only politician willing to take truly decisive action. By remaining outside the executive, Ventura maintains his populist purity, portraying himself as the sole authentic voice of a wronged and forgotten populace, while Montenegro is forced to navigate the pragmatic, and often unpopular, realities of governing.

Immigration, Security, and the Politics of Fear

The twin issues of immigration and security serve as the primary fuel for Chega’s political engine. Between 2019 and 2024, net migration into Portugal more than doubled, driven by flows from Brazil, South Asia, and other Portuguese-speaking African countries. While immigrants have been essential to plugging labour shortages in tourism, agriculture, and construction, their arrival has coincided with an unprecedented housing affordability crisis and has placed visible strain on public services. This has created a fertile ground for narratives linking immigration to social and economic problems. Isolated but highly publicised incidents of street crime, particularly in Lisbon and the Algarve, frequently lead nightly news broadcasts, feeding a growing perception that public safety is deteriorating.

In response to this public anxiety, and under pressure from Chega, Montenegro’s government has moved to dismantle Portugal’s relatively liberal immigration regime. The new laws raise residency-period requirements, restrict family reunification pathways, and effectively end the "expression of interest" mechanism that allowed undocumented migrants to regularise their status after paying social security contributions for a year. While the government frames these changes as necessary to create "regulated" and "orderly" immigration, they have been met with protests from undocumented workers who accuse the police of heavy-handed tactics and the state of exploitation. These demonstrations, widely circulated on social media, keep the issue vivid and contentious.

Seizing on this climate, Chega has also opened a new front in the culture war: the role of Islam in Portugal. Despite the fact that Portugal has never recorded a major Islamist-motivated terrorist attack on its soil, and academic studies confirm that the few cases of radicalisation involving Portuguese citizens have overwhelmingly occurred abroad, Chega deputies have relentlessly pushed for legislative audits of mosque financing and stricter zoning permissions for new places of worship. This rhetoric effectively places the country’s small and largely integrated Muslim community in the political crossfire, blurring nuance and stoking latent fears for political gain.

Montenegro’s Rightward Drift to Reclaim the Narrative

Faced with a fractured parliament and a constant populist threat from his right flank, Prime Minister Montenegro has embarked on a delicate and risky political gambit. His strategy is twofold: first, to co-opt Chega’s most potent issues, thereby neutralising their appeal, and second, to build a positive, forward-looking agenda that appeals to key demographics alienated by the old political system. The move to harden the immigration regime is the clearest example of the first prong. By taking decisive action, Montenegro aims to show conservative and anxious voters that the establishment right is listening and can be trusted to manage the border, hoping to steal the thunder from Ventura.

Simultaneously, he is aggressively courting younger voters and the professional class. His government has rolled out significant income tax breaks for those under 35, known as the "IRS Jovem", and introduced fiscal incentives for freelancers and digital nomads. These policies are designed to curb Portugal’s chronic "brain drain" and signal that the AD government is focused on economic dynamism and future prosperity, not just grievance politics. The initial results of this strategy appear modestly successful, with AD’s polling average ticking up to over 32 percent in the months following the election. The core challenge for Montenegro, however, is whether this rightward drift on sensitive issues like immigration inadvertently legitimises Chega’s core worldview. If he proves that tougher immigration laws are the answer, many voters may simply conclude that the party which has championed that cause from the beginning is the most authentic choice.

The Meloni Template: Lessons and Limitations for Ventura

In his quest for power, André Ventura is undoubtedly studying the playbook of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Meloni successfully transformed her Brothers of Italy party, which also has post-fascist roots, from a 4 percent fringe movement into the dominant force on the Italian right, capturing the premiership with a 26 percent election victory in 2022. She achieved this by building a disciplined political machine, masterfully moderating her image for international and financial audiences by embracing NATO and EU fiscal rules, and foregrounding economic pragmatism over purely ideological battles.

Ventura is already emulating key parts of this script. He has adopted a more polished, prime-ministerial look, swapping open-necked shirts for tailored suits. His rallies are high-energy, media-savvy events, and his use of clear, repeatable sound-bites dominates social media. He has also successfully courted the Portuguese diaspora, with Chega winning pluralities in both overseas electoral constituencies, a testament to his outreach. However, the comparison has its limits. Meloni’s greatest advantage was her ability to lead a pre-existing right-wing coalition into the election, uniting with Matteo Salvini's Lega and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia. Ventura, by contrast, is isolated. The established center-right, in the form of AD, is already in power and serves as his primary rival, not his partner. Furthermore, Portugal’s political culture, forged in the rejection of a right-wing dictatorship, has historically maintained a stronger cordon sanitaire against the far-right than Italy’s. To succeed, Ventura cannot simply copy Meloni; he must adapt her strategy to a far more hostile political landscape.

Scenarios for São Bento Palace

As the political dust settles, three broad scenarios for the future emerge, each with profound implications for Portugal.

The first is a Snap-Election Upset on a short horizon. Montenegro’s minority government is inherently unstable and could collapse over a failed budget or a vote of no confidence before its mandate ends in 2029. In the ensuing election, Chega would aim to capitalise on continued momentum and government fatigue. To secure the premiership, Ventura would likely need to achieve over 30 percent of the vote and forge a difficult post-election pact with a smaller party like the Liberal Initiative. While a steep climb, it is no longer an impossible one given the party’s trajectory.

The second, medium-term scenario is one of Gradual Accession and Normalization. In this future, Chega continues its steady growth, consistently polling above 25 percent and making significant gains in regional and local elections. By softening its most extreme rhetoric and focusing on economic and security concerns, the party could successfully rebrand itself as a legitimate, if robustly conservative, governing option. This could make Ventura an unavoidable junior partner in a future center-right coalition, opening a path to power similar to Meloni's, but through inclusion rather than an outright electoral victory.

The final possibility is a Populist Plateau. This is the scenario where Prime Minister Montenegro’s strategy proves successful. By tightening immigration, delivering tangible economic benefits to young people, and restoring a sense of competence and order, his AD government could effectively steal Chega’s political oxygen. In this future, Chega would lose its monopoly on protest votes and see its support level off, solidifying its role as a significant but ultimately contained opposition force, unable to muster the numbers required to enter government.

Conclusion: The Battle for the Soul of the Portuguese Right

André Ventura stands closer to the prime minister's residence in São Bento than any far-right leader in modern Portuguese history. His party’s phenomenal growth, his own agility as an opposition leader, widespread public concern over immigration and security, and the precedent set by other European populists have all provided powerful tailwinds. Yet, the final stretch of his journey to power may depend less on Chega’s own strength than on the strategic choices of his chief rival. The battle for Portugal’s future is currently a battle for the soul of the Portuguese right. How far Prime Minister Luís Montenegro is willing to shift his own coalition rightward to counter the threat will determine whether he can contain the populist wave or if, in trying to ride it, he is ultimately consumed by it. The outcome will define not only who governs Portugal but the very character of its democracy for the decade to come.