Portugal: Is Europe’s Vaccine Hero Losing Its “Special Balance”, Allowing Right-Wing Parties to Flourish?

After elections in January, Portuguese Socialists have secured an absolute majority, promising political continuity in the country that enjoys Europe's highest rate of vaccination against COVID-19. But the side story of the election was that Portugal's previous immunity to far-right representation in parliament has waned: the Chega party increased its presence from just one to 12 seats.

Chega's main pitch was opposition to the so-called elite, known as "the big center" in Portugal. And, as our analysis shows, this extends to opposing vaccine mandates and restrictions. To find out more, Daiva talked to Portuguese researchers Silvia Roque and Daniel Garcia.

You can find a Nature article about Portugal’s “special balance” here. Daniel Garcia’s thesis (in English) is available here. And this is a video of the prime minister being confronted by anti-vaccination protesters. And this is the link to the State of Hate 2021 report. Transcripts are at www.theinoculation.com

​​After the investigation is complete, you will be able to find the code we used for the analysis of the Portuguese data on our GitHub repository. The production of this investigation is supported by a grant from the IJ4EU fund. The International Press Institute (IPI), the European Journalism Centre (EJC) and any other partners in the IJ4EU fund are not responsible for the content published and any use made out of it.