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Winners and losers of ‘Gerigonça’: the aftermath of the Portuguese contract parliamentarism (2015-2019)
Edalina Sanches (Sanches, E.); Ana Espírito-Santo (Espírito-Santo, Ana); Sofia Serra-Silva (Serra-Silva, Sofia);
Event Title
Da austeridade à pandemia: Portugal e a Europa entre as crises e as inovações
Year (definitive publication)
2021
Language
Portuguese
Country
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Abstract
The Portuguese 2015 national elections resulted in an unusual – at least for Portuguese patterns – governing solution that consisted of a ‘contract parliamentarism’, marked by a minority Socialist government with the institutionalised support of three rather small, “outsider” and extreme-left political parties (the BE, the PEV and the BE). Against all expectations, this governing arrangement – which became known as geringonça – managed to survive the whole legislative term and to govern with remarkable success; hitting high levels of public approval. In this paper, we focus on the 2019 elections in order to shed light on the consequences of the geringonça for the electorate. How were the vote transfers made between 2015 and 2019? Which parties were more penalized? Who voted for and against the geringonça parties in the aftermath, and to what extent is their profile different from those who voted these parties in 2015? These are some of the key questions we aim to address, drawing on original data from a panel survey conducted by the MAPLE project. Preliminary results suggest the existence of some volatility between the geringonça parties, notably between the PS and the BE, and that the sharp defeat on the right is partly due to a transfer of votes to the PS. Accordingly, those who voted for a geringonça party in 2015 do a positive evaluation of the government performance and even those who voted for right-wing parties in 2015 do not make a very negative appraisal of it. To explain these patterns of vote transfer we test hypotheses that highlight the role of short-term issues (government, policy and leader evaluation ) on voters’ decisions
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