With 99.05% of the votes counted and no possibility of disputing the municipalities still being reported, the CDU emerges from these local elections with only 12 municipalities, confirming the decline at the municipal level that has been observed since 2013.
Following a campaign highlighted by the message that “those who know [the CDU’s work], trust it,” tonight’s local election results contradicted this thesis: of the 19 councils won in 2021, the coalition managed to retain only eight (Barrancos, Cuba, Arraiolos, Silves, Avis, Palmela, Seixal, and Sesimbra).
Among the 11 councils that the CDU lost (mostly to the PS) are the last two district capitals it held (Setúbal and Évora) and, particularly painfully, the Serpa council, a bastion always managed by the communists since 1976.
Of the six strongholds where it competed in the 2021 local elections, the CDU now retains only two: Arraiolos and Avis.
These losses led the PCP’s Secretary-General, Paulo Raimundo, to acknowledge it as a “negative result” that will “negatively condition” the interests of local populations.
Among the reasons attributed to this outcome is the “greater dispersion of political forces,” specifically referring to Chega, and the fact that 12 CDU mayors could not run again due to reaching the limit of three consecutive terms. In these 12 municipalities, the CDU was defeated in six but retained the rest.
Nevertheless, the PCP’s Secretary-General emphasized that the local election results also had “elements of resilience,” such as the fact that four new councils were won, all from the PS: Montemor-o-Novo, Mora, Aljustrel, and Sines.
Mora and Montemor-o-Novo were two victories particularly celebrated by the CDU, as they are councils always managed by the communists since 1976 but were lost to the PS in 2021.
Paulo Raimundo pointed to these examples to highlight that tonight’s election results disproved “many predictions about the inevitable loss for the CDU” and confirmed “the real possibilities to advance and reclaim the councils” lost tonight.
“I think that, once and for all, the myth of an irreversible loss, whether of votes or local majorities, is over. We recovered, winning four new councils,” he stated.
On the other hand, the PCP’s Secretary-General also highlighted that the CDU’s national results show “an evolution in voting” compared to the legislative elections of May—five months ago, the coalition received 183,000 votes.
Now, with 99.05% of the votes counted, the coalition has nearly 287,000 votes and remains, in terms of council numbers, the third political force at the municipal level while being the sixth at the parliamentary level.
Yet, when compared to the results of the last local elections in 2021, a significant electoral drop is evident for the coalition led by the PCP: at that time, the CDU had 410,000 votes compared to the current 287,000.
Despite this electoral setback, Paulo Raimundo rejected the notion that the result indicates the CDU has “no road left” at the local level, setting the goal of reclaiming the councils lost tonight in the next local elections.
“The CDU’s project, serving the populations, will not be interrupted. We will have to recover soon. We have four years ahead to reclaim them,” he said.
