The Portuguese are available to provide police access to metadata in the event of a serious crime and also in cases where people can be detained without a state of emergency having to be declared. But they are not interested in extending the vote to 16 or changing the term of office of the President of the Republic. This is evident from the results of an Aximage survey for DN, JN and TSF on the constitutional review process.
The initiative for the constitutional review process belonged to Chega, but parliamentary math dictates that there will only be changes that are in agreement between the PS and the PSD. Only with the involvement of the two largest parties can the indispensable two-thirds majority of the deputies be achieved. And that means passing the amendments that allow the use of metadata and confinement, as socialists and social democrats have included these issues in their priority list.
In fact, these are the two proposals with which the Portuguese most identify (out of a total of six with which the survey confronted them). In particular with regard to the so-called “metadata law”: 59% agree that the police should be allowed to use data on traffic and the location of communications, be it phone calls or internet browsing, in case of suspicion of serious crimes and if there is court authorization. Support for including this possibility in the Constitution is particularly strong among PS and PSD voters. If approved, the “veto” of the Constitutional Court will not be repeated, as happened in April this year, to the surprise of the Public Prosecution Service.
gender identity
Another amendment with majority support concerns detentions. The proposal is again on the PS and PSD list and specifically states that it is possible to restrict the freedom of people with an infectious disease (e.g. covid) even if the country is not in a state of emergency: 54% of respondents agree, and the socialist and social-democratic voters are again the strongest supporters.
There is another proposal to amend the constitution that has a majority of Portuguese (53% agree), but whose chances of approval are less clear. It is the PS that proposes to include gender identity as a non-discriminatory factor (in addition to, for example, sexual orientation, religion or political opinion) and support for this addition is also greater among socialist voters (70%). But the measure is not one of the priorities of the PSD, and it is also true that the social-democratic voters are less enthusiastic (only 45% agree).
Vote against at 16
When it comes to changes in the functioning of the political system, resistance is greater. According to the poll, the proposal of the PSD (and also the BE) to extend the right to vote from 18 to 16 years is not accepted: 28% agree, but 47% disagree, including the Social Democratic voters ( 53%).
The same applies to the mandates of the President of the Republic. One of the PSD’s priorities for this constitutional revision is the idea of reducing it from two to one term, although extending the extension from five to seven years. The idea does not work with the Portuguese: 40% are against (42% of the social-democratic voters) and only 32% support this change.
RESEARCH TECHNICAL SHEET
The survey was carried out by Aximage for DN, TSF and JN, with the aim of gauging the opinion of the Portuguese on the proposals for constitutional revision.
The fieldwork took place between 25 and 30 November 2022 and collected 800 interviews among people over the age of 18 living in Portugal.
Sampling was performed based on quotas, obtained through a matrix intersecting gender, age and region (NUTSII), from the known universe, rebalanced by gender, age group and education. For a probability sample of 800 interviews, the maximum standard deviation of a proportion is 0.017 (ie, a 95% “margin of error” of 3.46%).
Responsible for the study: Aximage Comunicação e Imagem, Lda., under the technical direction of Ana Carla Basílio.
Source: DN
