José Luís Carneiro was the only candidate in the PS general secretary elections and was reappointed to the position. Naturally, as it is the only one in the dispute, there is a tendency that this type of election is not as well participated as others, however, it is notable that within a group of close to 100 thousand activists, from what the DN found from sources at the National Secretariat, less than 38 thousand were eligible to vote.
Thus, this is the number of activists who could participate in the election, with the necessary quotas regularized. Accounts made, with a participation value of 53%, Carneiro received just over 20 thousand votes, that is, he was elected by just over a fifth of the activists.
Even so, it was reinforced both in terms of votes and participation percentage. In 2025, after the departure of Pedro Nuno Santos, it reached just over 16,300 of the 17,100 voters, accumulating 95.4%. The participation rate, however, was 45.8%, almost 8 percentage points below what was recorded now. Thus, it effectively reinforced the margin, but not exactly the electoral base.
In the previous election, Pedro Nuno Santos had received 24,080 votes, corresponding to 62%. Even though in 2023 he beat Carneiro, who accumulated 36%, with 14,868 votes, electoral participation had, adding Daniel Adrião’s 382, just over 39 thousand votes. Despite being more competitive than the last two with single candidates, it is worth noting that the PS, with an estimated base of around 100 thousand members, has never managed to surpass the threshold of 40 thousand voters in recent years.
José Luís Carneiro himself, despite claiming to be more electorally legitimate, included in the strategic motion the need to reform statutes and bring members closer to the party’s decisions and increase participation in it.
In recent cases, it is worth mentioning that active militancy has not been a dominant feature in other parties either. Of the universe of close to 10 thousand members of the Bloco de Esquerda, José Manuel Pureza, for example, was only elected via 10% of these, and they only represented 475 votes. In the PAN, despite the 100% victory in December, Inês de Sousa Real had only 69 activists out of a total of 72 delegates. There is a lack of concrete numbers in the PAN, despite the decline in several memberships being noted. Also in PS 65 they stopped electing delegates because they did not have 100 activists to obtain representation.
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