LONDON

Portugal is headed for only the second presidential runoff in its history after no candidate secured more than 50% of the vote in Sunday’s first round, setting up a tight race between Socialist and far-right contenders.

With almost all votes counted as of Monday, opposition Socialist Party candidate Antonio Jose Seguro garnered the votes, with some 31%, in the first round of Portugal's presidential election.

Far-right Chega party candidate Andre Ventura secured a place in the runoff set for Feb. 8, winning 24% of votes, according to the Portuguese news agency LUSA.

Portuguese voters headed to the polls to choose their next president amid rising support for Ventura, but the result showed it was the best result for a Socialist candidate since Jorge Sampaio in 2001, who at the time won the elections with 55%.

Incumbent conservative President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who won nearly 60% of the vote in 2021, is completing his second and final five-year term. Eleven candidates are competing to succeed him, including Ventura, who secured nearly 12% in the last presidential election.

According to the Interior Ministry, the turnout stood at 45.51%.

Seguro, who secured most of the votes, defined the results as a "democracy win," and said he "will win again on Feb. 8."

During his speech late Sunday, he called on democrats, progressives, and humanists to support him to "defeat extremism."

Ventura, for his part, vowed to unite the far-right until the second round.

Joao Cotrim de Figueiredo of the Liberal Initiative party came third with 16%, followed by independent candidate Henrique Gouveia e Melo with 12.3%.

Luis Marques Mendes of the ruling center-right Social Democratic Party was seen taking some 11.4%.

Portugal has held a second round in a presidential election only once, in 1986, when former Socialist Prime Minister Mario Soares overturned a first-round defeat to beat Freitas do Amaral.

The campaign has taken place against a backdrop of debates over social inequality, low wages, housing shortages, restrictions on migrant rights, and labor policies introduced by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Luis Montenegro.

Chega, founded seven years ago and led by Ventura, became the main opposition party for the first time after early parliamentary elections held last May.

Around 11 million voters are registered for the election, including approximately 1.6 million living abroad.

*Ilayda Cakirtekin in Istanbul contributed to this report.