Fall PS allows PSD approach

The difference between PS (28.3%) and PSD (24.8%) is smaller than ever, and comparing the results with August and September of this year, we see that the distance between the two main parties continues to shrink, initially to 10 %. , then up to 6%, and now only up to 3.5%.

The trend is clear and shows that the Social Democrats are gaining strength against the PS. Many of the cases that shook the government have already influenced the voters’ decision to vote.

On the other hand, in October the Intercampus barometer for CM/CMTV shows that Chega (9.2%) continues to lead the Liberal Initiative (7.3%), but while André Ventura’s party maintained its intention to vote in the previous month, the party (still) led by Cotrim de Figueiredo won almost 2%.

Livre (2.2%) overtook the PAN (1.8%), and BE (6.1%) remains the fifth political force after Chega and IL, but ahead of the CDU (2.6%), which fell by almost 3%. Finally, CDS does not exceed 0.6%.

The undecided make up about 15%, which is the same as last month.

Like PS, António Costa also fell significantly in October, falling from 3.0% to 2.8%. On this scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is very negative and 5 is very positive (3 is the average, neither positive nor negative), all leaders receive a negative average. But, with the exception of the case of António Costa, there are few differences from the previous month.

In October, the minister with the most positive assessment of the respondents is President Mariana Vieira da Silva (5.8%). Infrastructure and Housing Minister Pedro Nuno Santos, despite being the third most popular (4.3%), also has the highest bounce rate (-16.8%) on the barometer.

António Costa Silva, Minister of Economy, was ranked second best with 4.4%. In the opposite direction, health ministers Manuel Pizarro (-6.8%) and education ministers Joao Costa (-4.0%) also show a very negative balance.

Incompatible ministers must go
The vast majority of those surveyed have no doubts about the correctness of the decision regarding the ministers who “fell” in the network of the Law on Incompatibility. 60.5% believe that ministers should be fired from the government regardless of whether they broke the law. I conclude that this is a matter of ethics.

Over the past month, many ministers have been involved in situations of doubt and controversy, as they could directly or indirectly break the law through their spouses.
Pedro Nuno Santos, Manuel Pizarro and Ana Abrunosa found themselves in such a situation.

Marcelo on a steep descent
Marcelo Rebelo de Souza’s controversial statement about the 424 complaints received by the Independent Commission for the Study of Child Sexual Abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church may be “not a particularly large number” has already hurt the popularity of the President of the Republic.

“Having 400 cases doesn’t seem particularly high to me, because there were thousands of cases in other countries with a shorter horizon,” Marcelo said earlier in the month, thus inadvertently starting a whirlwind of outraged reactions that damaged his image. . Marcelo tried several times to correct the statement, but only managed to worsen public opinion. He eventually apologized, but the damage was done. This month, the President of the Republic recorded a sharp drop from 3.5 to 3.2 points.

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DATA SHEET

Purpose: A survey conducted by Intercampus for CM and CMTV to find out the opinion of the Portuguese on various topics of the national current universe of the Portuguese population aged 18 and over, registered for elections, living in the Portuguese mainland. Sample: Consists of 607 interviews with the following distribution: 292 with men and 315 with women; 127 people aged 18 to 34, 211 people aged 35 to 54, and 269 people aged 55 and over; 143 in the north, 140 in the center, 166 in Lisbon, 41 in the Alentejo and 27 in the Algarve. Sampling: Household selection was made by randomly generating landline/mobile phone numbers. At home, the selection of the respondent was carried out by the method of sex and age quota (3 groups). The quota matrix by region (NUTS II), sex and age was prepared on the basis of data from the Electoral Census of Portugal (12/31/2020) of the General Directorate of Internal Administration (DGAI) Information collection: Through telephone interview, in complete confidentiality, through the CATI system. Fieldwork was conducted between October 7 and 22, 2022. Margin of error: The maximum sampling error for the 95% confidence interval is about 4.0% Response rate 62.6%.