Portuguese General Election 2024: Forecast and Scenario Construction

Portugal faces its most challenging and most important election yet: the far-right looks poised to make a comeback to mainstream politics only 50 years after the Carnation Revolution whilst the corruption-ridden Socialist Party may yet minimise the political losses of the lithium scandal. To try and make sense of the uncertainty and provide some insightful analysis, this report uses aggregated polling data to forecast the popular vote share of each of the current parliamentary parties using ARIMA time-series models. From these models, four scenarios are constructed with corresponding estimations of parliamentary composition. It must be noted, however, that the actual number of seats reported in each scenario is only indicative.