The two candidates begin to add up the victories. Rui Rio won in Santa Maria da Feira (Aveiro district), one of the party’s major councils and reinforced the vote in Porto. It also added the districts of Santarém, Faro, Guarda and Vila Real.
Luís Montenegro also achieved an expressive victory in Barcelos (Braga district). The former parliamentary leader also won in the districts of Leiria, Viseu and Braga and in the West Area of Lisbon, just like last Saturday. And he managed to win in the largest district in the country, Lisbon, which had given Miguel Pinto Luz the victory, with an 1182 advantage over Rio.
During the afternoon, the two candidates expressed confidence in the possibility of victory, although the candidate for the PSD presidency, who had the biggest electoral advantage in the first round, was more cautious. “I’m confident, but I always have to put two scenarios, you never know,” Rio told reporters after voting at PSD’s headquarters in Porto, adding that “I could even put three [cenários], but a tie is statistically difficult “.
In the first round, Rui Rio managed 49.02% (15,546 votes) and was 344 votes from the majority, and the former parliamentary leader 41.42% (13,137 votes). Rui Rio will accompany the election night in a hotel in Porto and Luís Montenegro in Lisbon, also in a hotel.
Luís Montenegro also said this afternoon: “I am very confident and very calm. The campaign was a long one, I was always careful to make the largest number of sessions and meetings with the militants in order to clarify my purposes, my ideas, my convictions and the strategic guidelines I want for the PSD. I always did it with elevation, without attacking anyone “.
Still questioned about the annulment of the suffrage in PSD / Madeira, Montenegro stated that this electoral process “is tainted by the fact that there are militants prevented from exercising their right to vote”, classifying the annulment as a “failure of articulation and political coordination”.
For his part, Rui Rio considered it “not very correct” that the 104 militants with current quotas in Madeira had not been able to vote in the party’s direct elections.
“It is not very correct, because there are 104 people in Madeira who did exactly the same as those 40 thousand and I don’t know how many [os 40.604 militantes com as quotas em dia que puderam votar na segunda volta de hoje], so they have the right to vote, “Rio said in remarks to journalists on arrival at the Porto hotel where he will accompany the party’s election night.
Maintaining that, “the way they did, these people were left without the right to vote, and they complied just like everyone else”, the still leader of the PSD considered that this “was unnecessary”: “I don’t think it’s beautiful, I don’t think beautiful There are also often, in national elections, boycotts at the tables and people cannot vote, it also happens, but here it was unnecessary “, he maintained.
In the first round, 32,082 activists voted, a participation rate of 79%, the highest ever in percentage in direct, despite being the lowest in absolute numbers of all PSD elections in which there was a dispute, due to the new rules for the payment of quotas.
The controversy with PSD-Madeira – all votes of the first round in the Autonomous Region were considered null by the CJN due to discrepancies with the official electoral roll – will continue, with the regional structure deciding that it will not open the seats for the second round , considering that this would be a “humiliation” for the social democratic activists of the archipelago.
The ‘key’ to the electoral result should return, as usual, to the four largest PSD districts: Porto, Lisbon, Braga and Aveiro register, in this order, the largest number of militants able to vote, centralizing more than 57% of the total.
Last Saturday, Rui Rio won in 13 districts or structures, including two of the largest: Porto, Aveiro, Bragança, Guarda, Viana do Castelo, Vila Real, Santarém, Faro, Beja, Portalegre, Évora, Azores and Europe.
Luís Montenegro won in six: in addition to the powerful district of Braga, he won in Leiria, Viseu, Coimbra, Castelo Branco and Lisboa Área Oeste.
Pinto Luz won in the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon (with Montenegro in second) and in Setúbal, also claiming victory in Madeira, but the votes of the Autonomous Region were not counted.
In the Out of Europe circle, the four militants who voted were equally divided between Rio and Montenegro, registering a draw.
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