Presidenciais portuguesas de 2021 e o populismo

As eleições presidenciais portuguesas de 2021 foram palco de fenómenos políticos inéditos. A pandemia e a campanha antissistema de um dos candidatos motivaram comportamentos incomuns. O debate radicalizou-se e aprofundou-se a conflitualidade entre candidatos/as e entre estes/estas, o Governo e o Presidente da República (PR). Tendo como quadro teórico diversas perspetivas da Democracia e do Populismo, exploram-se indicadores de populismo na cobertura jornalística televisiva da campanha eleitoral. O estudo permitiu identificar elementos de comunicação política que oscilam entre o registo populista e o popular. Verificou-se que a comunicação política populista encontrou a sua expressão máxima nos discursos do candidato apoiado pelo partido de extrema-direita. Os/as outros/as candidatos/as, embora com matizes, incorporam elementos discursivos nas suas campanhas que deslizam entre o populista e o popular.

2021 Presidential elections in Portugal involved unprecedented political events. The Covid-19 pandemic and the populist campaign of one of the candidates led to uncommon events. There was a radicalisation of the debate, higher level of conflict among the candidates, and between them and both the Government and the incumbent President. Adding to these circumstances, the incumbent President, also running for reelection, was the responsible for the management of the State of Emergency that was enacted during the entire period of electoral campaign. Using the theoretical framework of various perspectives of Democracy and Populism, we have explored indicators of populism in the television coverage of this electoral campaign. This study enabled the identification of elements of political discourse that vary between populist and popular. The populist political discourse is chiefly achieved by the far-right candidate, but all other candidates exhibited patterns of discourse that vary between the populist and the popular.