Over the past decades, work in political psychology has strengthened the idea that emotions play a crucial role in understanding political behaviour. Yet one question remains undertheorized: how do shifts in political emotions over time help explain parliamentary realignments? To address this question, this project focuses on the Portuguese case, placing emotions at its centre.

Until 2019, Portugal stood apart from the broader European trend, lacking an electorally significant radical right-wing populist party. However, this changed over the 2022-2025 legislative cycle: the Socialist Party (PS) lost ground and the radical left collapsed, while Chega rose from the margins, establishing itself as the main opposition party. The collapse of the centre-left and radical left may reflect a process in which their voters or supporters gradually accumulated negative emotions towards these parties, weakening their party identification and loosening their vote. The case of Chega is more thought-provoking, given that the Portuguese literature shows that non-voters tend to appraise Chega negatively in emotional terms. Consequently, for Chega to have risen so quickly, this negative emotional barrier around the party must have softened over time, allowing voters to support it.

To capture this dynamic, this project proposes the concept of affective shift: a process in which the negative emotions towards radical right-wing parties gradually attenuate, allowing voters to support a party that they may once have considered unthinkable.

Drawing on a survey-based design measuring discrete emotions, party identification and vote intention, this project aims to understand how emotions can shape the vote, reshape party identifications and explain the rise of the populist radical right parties.