Socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa won Portugal's early Sunday general elections with a score that allows him to form a one-party majority in Parliament, according to the official semi-final results.

At the end of a poll marked by the strong progress of the far right, the Socialist Party has in fact already obtained at least 117 seats out of 230.

Given in the latest polls side by side with the center-right opposition, Costa improves his score in 2019 thus freeing himself from his former allies on the radical left, who had provoked these early elections by rejecting the draft budget for 2022.

The 60-year-old former mayor of Lisbon came to power in 2015 sealing a left union unprecedented since the 1974 Carnation Revolution, when he hadn't even won those elections. Now it gives the Socialist Party the second absolute majority in its history.

According to the partial results concerning all the constituencies except the foreign ones, which elect four deputies, the Socialist Party (PS) comes first with 41.7% of the votes. "An absolute majority is not absolute power, but an increased majority," Costa said in front of his supporters.

"It is a victory for humility, trust and stability," he added.

(Unioneonline / vl)