PS voted against Chega more times. Ventura’s party abstained more on socialist measures

Chega was the party that most abstained from voting on socialist measures and the PS was the party that rejected most Chega measures, during the previous Government of António Costa. The conclusions were drawn from Parliament’s open data, available on the platform Hemicycle Partyby Frederico Muñoz.

The political landscape has changed. The AD coalition won the legislative elections on March 10 and social democrat Luís Montenegro took office as prime minister and has accused PS and Chega of forming a “negative coalition” against the new executive.

The vote to eliminate tolls on the old SCUT, this Thursday, aligned PS and Chega. Or rather, it aligned the votes of all parties with parliamentary seats with the exception of the Liberal Initiative, which abstained, and the PSD and CDS, which voted against. The Minister of Parliamentary Affairs accused the two largest opposition parties of coming together to “block and undermine the Government’s action”.

Is there a voting record that aligns the PS and Chega in the Assembly? Or are SCUT an isolated case?

Since this legislature began, specifically between April 19 and 24 of this year – with data updated weekly -, the Socialist Party and Chega have voted five times in the same way, on proposals presented in the Assembly of the Republic. The Liberal Initiative also voted five times alongside the PS. These are the two parties with which the socialists have the least votes in common in the 18 votes that have taken place so far.

But despite changing the legislature, the trend is not significantly different. While António Costa was prime minister, Chega voted in the same way as the PS in 638 out of 2,400 votes. The only party that disagreed more with the socialist bench was the PAN. Inês Sousa Real only voted exactly the same as the PS in 621 initiatives.

The big difference between the two moments is the position of the Socialist Party in the Assembly and in the Government. While in the former XV legislature the socialists held a position of great advantage – with a Government with an absolute majority -, in this new political cycle the PS has the same function as Chega: to oppose the Government led by Luís Montenegro. This change in the relationship between the parties could influence the progression of trends towards proximity and identical voting while Luís Montenegro’s executive governs, but it is still too early for the data to show this.

When looking at the approximate voting direction, it is curious that the person who had the most identical votes with both parties was the same parliamentary group: the PSD. As the main opposition party, the Social Democrats cast 1,066 votes equal to those of the Socialists and 1,281 to Chega, out of 2,400 votes.

In the context of the Assembly and the total number of measures voted in general, differences continue. Between January 2022 and January 2024, the initiatives presented by Chega were the most rejected among the parties with parliamentary seats. After all, 209 of the party’s 210 proposals that were voted in general received a “no”. The PS – which at the time had a majority – had very different results, approving all 50 proposals he presented.