Portuguese Presidential Election (2021) and The Populism turn

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 popu- list 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.