Portugal's far-right underwhelms in local elections, wins three mayorships

By Sergio Goncalves

LISBON (Reuters) -Portugal's far-right Chega party fell back to earth in municipal elections, with a far worse result than it had anticipated after a surge in May that made it the country's official opposition.

The party won three out of 308 elected mayorships in Sunday's election, despite having predicted it could win 30. Its vote share fell to 12%, a far cry from its nearly 23% in the parliamentary election five months ago.

The ruling centre-right Social Democratic Party (PSD) won the largest share of mayors' races with 136 including those in the largest cities Lisbon and Porto, improving from 114 four years ago. Its centre-left Socialist rivals won 128.

Chega's result still gave it the third most votes of any party, but it emerged with fewer mayorships than independent candidates, with 20, and the Communist Party, with 12.

Chega's rise since the election of the group's first member of parliament in 2019 has shaken up Portugal's political landscape. It has aligned its rhetoric with Marine le Pen's National Rally in France and Germany's AfD.

It seeks to clean up the political system, end "gender ideology" in schools, curb immigration and reduce spending on housing for Roma communities, a policy it says increases crime.

Ventura acknowledged that his party fell short of expectations and said that coming to power in Portugal required having a wide base of elected officials at the local level.

"Today we took a first step in that direction, but we are still far from that goal," he told reporters.

Political scientist Jose Tomaz Castello Branco of Lisbon's Catholic University said Chega still needs to demonstrate it could be "a strong enough local party and not a one-man show" of Ventura.

He said that despite winning few mayorships, Chega could still gain institutional legitimacy at the local level by pushing the PSD to breach "red lines" against cooperating with the far right in municipalities where it lacks full control.

(Reporting by Sergio Goncalves and Andrei KhalipEditing by Charlie Devereux and Peter Graff)