A voter-led cordon sanitaire : coordination failure on the right and negative voting in Portugal’s 2026 presidential elections

Right-of-center candidates won close to two-thirds of the first-round vote in Portugal’s 2026 presidential election, yet none reached the presidency. Right-wing fragmentation was a coordination failure that sent André Ventura (Chega; Enough) to the run-off, where António José Seguro (Socialist Party) beat him two to one. Right-wing voters coalesced against Ventura without party cues. For 28.5 per cent of Seguro’s voters this was negative voting: a ballot cast against Ventura, not for him. Among right-wing voters, attitudes and ideology distinguished those who crossed the left-right divide to vote for Seguro from those who chose Ventura, while partisanship did not. They drew a line their parties would not, because it rested on what they believed rather than on whom they followed.