Portugal's Socialists extend lead ahead of October election - poll

Portugal's ruling Socialists have extended their lead slightly as the favorite to win the country's national election in October, an opinion poll showed on Friday. Prime Minister Antonio Costa's center-left Socialists were seen taking 37.5% of the vote, according to the survey by Aximage for newspapers Jornal de Negocios and Correio da Manha, up two percentage points from a previous poll in June.

The Socialists would still fall short of the around 42% of the vote needed to garner a majority in the Portuguese parliament, but with around 38% they would only need the support of one other party to form a government. The main opposition, the Social Democrats, were seen taking 23.6% of the vote, slightly up from 23.1% the previous month, while the conservative CDS-PP saw support drop to 4.9% from 6.6% last month.

Costa won the parliamentary support of two far-left parties, the Left Bloc and the Communists when the Socialists came to power in 2015. These parties saw support stand at 9.4% and 6.8% respectively in the Aximage's poll. As the Socialists would probably need to again seek either a similar alliance or a coalition partner to govern, a potential new kingmaker has emerged as the People-Animals-Nature party (PAN). It recently won a seat in the European Parliament and, according to the poll, could grab 4% of the votes in October.

The pollsters surveyed 601 people between July 12 and 15, with a margin of error of 4%.

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