Election gains a boost for Portugese PM

Bloomberg

The minority government
of Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa received a boost after his Socialist Party gained in national municipal elections.
Two years before the next general election is due, the Socialists took 38 percent of the vote and 157 town halls with 99.8 percent of the country’s voting districts reporting, according to the government’s election website. Turnout was 55 percent on Sunday, compared with 52.6 percent at the previous local elections in 2013. “The Socialist Party had its biggest local election victory in history,” Costa said.
“There’s a strengthening of the change that we started in parliament two years ago
and which has demonstrated
to the country that it’s possible to have better results with
new policies.”
Portugal has 308 municipalities, and the Socialists went into the election holding 149 of these plus one in a coalition in Funchal on the island of Madeira. Socialist Mayor Fernando Medina won Sunday’s election in Lisbon.Higher tourist arrivals and growing exports have helped drive a rebound in Portugal’s economy, strengthening former Lisbon mayor Costa as unemployment fell and the budget deficit narrowed to the lowest point in four decades.
Since taking office at the end of 2015, Costa has governed with the support of the Left Bloc, Communist and Green parties, as he seeks to alleviate some of the austerity measures that were part of a bailout programme implemented by the previous government.