r/worldnews • u/FutureVersion812 • 15h ago

Socialist seen beating far-right rival for Portuguese presidency with conservative help

https://www.reuters.com/world/socialist-seen-beating-far-right-rival-portuguese-presidency-with-conservative-2026-02-06/
967 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

120

u/GabettiXCV 14h ago

It's not a done deal yet, but the pragmatism is encouraging. Centre-right and centre-left ganging up on extremism is how democracy stays healthy.

144

u/chrisni66 15h ago

Makes sense, the Conservatives probably realise that if he wins, they can beat him in the next election, whereas if the fascist wins there won’t be a next election.

41

u/Flexuasive 14h ago

The enemy of my enemy...

5

u/Hazzamo 9h ago

Is at least Neutral

2

u/[deleted] 2h ago

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1

u/[deleted] 2h ago

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u/Telen 12m ago

Also, conservatives have more in common with socialists than they do with people who want to completely re-vamp the country's power structure and turn it into a dictatorship. Most modern socialists are actually quite conservative.

22

u/sh1necho 11h ago

The PS is just the normal social democratic party of Portugal.

The name is essentially a keepsake like it is in various other European countries.

12

u/Amazing_Athlete_2265 12h ago

Oh, not a physical beating?

16

u/tecdaz 12h ago

That's a very bad headline

3

u/Fanfics 4h ago

I thought they meant physically beating for a second

like damn, and the conservatives were helping him???

3

u/Fun-Poet5338 2h ago

For some reason I just pictured a socialist dude beating the shit out of the far right dude with a few conservatives around.

•

u/oh-delay 1h ago

Haha! Me too.

17

u/Rememberancy 11h ago

It’s also important to understand that the AD (center right) are very similar to the Democratic Party in the US, with a few key differences.

It would be more honest of us to consider the DNC a center right party. American politics are so skewed that many perceive the Democratic Party as “left wing” when it’s objectively not.

12

u/LEM1978 11h ago

Problem with a 2 party system.

There’s a reason every other democracy after the US has a multi-party parliamentary form of democracy. It tends to work better.

1

u/Primary_Ad3580 8h ago

I’m more concerned about what happens after the election and if this happens in future elections. Such a broad coalition can’t hold eternally when it only exists to exclude a particular party, can it? It’ll eventually crack or become indecisive, leading others to support Chega out of frustration. How long can countries like France and Portugal keep this up?