A poll published Friday gave Costa an 81 percent approval rating, up from 47 percent in December 2015. Not bad compared to fellow center-left leaders such as Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who’s slipped to around 30 percent, and French President François Hollande, languishing around 4 percent.
“We’ve been able to keep all our promises to the Portuguese people,” Costa said Tuesday after parliament approved his budget for 2017. “We’ve turned the page on austerity … we’ve shown an alternative is possible and we’ll keep building that alternative.”
Far-right populism, surging across Europe, is largely absent in Portugal, and the government has been stealing support from the two far-left parties who back the minority government in parliament. Both the Portuguese Communist Party on 6 percent and the Left Bloc on 8 percent have dropped a couple of points since the election. [...]
Portugal’s aversion to far-right politics can be explained in part by the lasting legacy of dictator António Oliveira Salazar, whose harsh regime lasted for over four decades until toppled by a 1974 revolution. Portugal has also not experienced a recent influx of refugees or a sudden surge of immigrants, like those that fueled the growth of the far-right elsewhere. Its immigrant communities, mainly from Brazil, Portuguese-speaking Africa and Eastern European countries such as Ukraine and Romania, are comparatively well integrated.
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