Hugo Soares arrived shortly before 19:00 at the PSD-Porto headquarters, where the party is observing the local election night, welcoming indications that abstention may have slightly decreased compared to four years ago.
“I believe the decrease will be slight, not substantial, but it’s always better to have a drop in the abstention rate than an increase,” he stated.
When asked about his expectations for the evening, the PSD official emphasized that the polls had not closed nationwide and refrained from extensive comments.
“The expectation is that more Portuguese seem to have participated, which is a positive note, and we await the end of the evening. I believe it will be a long night as local elections usually are; we will wait to see what the verdict of the Portuguese people is,” he said.
Asked if there is any “nervousness about Lisbon and Porto,” where recent polls indicated technical ties between PS and PSD, Hugo Soares admitted there is always some nervousness on election nights.
“What I can say is that we are very confident in all the candidacies we proposed for the country,” he stated.
Hugo Soares took part in the local election tour substituting for Luís Montenegro when the PSD leader had commitments as prime minister and was asked if it was worthwhile to visit such strategic municipalities where the contest is tight.
“Regardless of the result, it would always be worthwhile to be alongside our candidates supporting our candidacies and local projects. We await the election result to see if there was any effect we hoped for in this electoral campaign,” he said.
Due to renovations at the national headquarters, the Social Democrats focused on observing results at the Porto headquarters, where there are significantly more journalists than party officials, who can still be counted on one hand.
More than 9.3 million voters can participate in these municipal elections, according to data from the voter registration provided by the Secretariat-General of the Ministry of Internal Administration (MAI).
Four years ago, the PSD won 114 municipalities (72 alone and 42 in coalition), reducing the margin with the socialists from 63 to 35 councils, with the latter winning 149.
The abstention rate in local elections has been over 40% since 2009, with the second-highest percentage of 46.35% recorded four years ago, slightly below the record 47.4% in 2013.
