On the eve of the legislative elections, taking place on Sunday, May 18, in Portugal, the far right is leading among young people aged 18 to 24. According to a poll by the weekly Expresso, published on May 11, the party Chega ("enough") would gather 23% of the voting intentions in this age group, equal to the ruling center-right coalition led by the outgoing prime minister, Luis Montenegro (Partido Social Democrata, PSD, center-right). "The rise in votes for the far-right party Chega is a sign of the end of the anti-authoritarian political culture that has prevailed in Portugal since the end [in 1974] of the regime of [Antonio de Oliveira] Salazar. After 50 years of democracy, young people have lost the memory of the dictatorship," observed historian and political scientist Antonio Costa Pinto, a professor at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon.

The snap elections, organized after the failure of the confidence motion presented by Montenegro, who has been surrounded by suspicions of conflicts of interest, could thus allow the far right to replicate the record result it achieved in the last elections and solidify its position as the third party. In March 2024, Chega obtained 18% of the votes and 50 of the 230 seats in the Portuguese parliament − 11 points more than in 2022 and 17 more than in 2019, when it burst onto the Portuguese political scene.

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