Socialists get another run in Portugal

But Prime Minister Costa faces task of finding allies after election victory

LISBON - Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa's Socialists won a general election marked by low turnout on Sunday after presiding over solid economic growth following years of austerity.

The Socialist Party, or PS, took 36.65 percent of the vote, followed by the center-right Social Democrats, or PSD, with 27.9 percent, according to near complete results from the Interior Ministry.

That left the PS, which has governed for the past four years with the support of two smaller hard-left parties, with 106 seats in the 230-seat parliament, up from 86 seats in the outgoing assembly and just 10 short of an outright majority. Four seats are yet to be declared, subject to the count from votes cast abroad.

The election bucks the trend of declining center-left fortunes and the rise of far-right populist forces seen elsewhere in Europe.

Turnout was just 54.5 percent, the lowest level for a general election since Portugal returned to democracy after a decadeslong right-wing rule was toppled in 1974.

The question now is who Costa, 58, a former Lisbon mayor, will pick as his allies.

After the last general election in 2015 in which the PS finished second, Costa convinced the Communists and the Left Bloc to support a minority Socialist government, an unprecedented alliance that foes nicknamed the "geringonca", or odd contraption.

In his victory speech, Costa said he wanted to "renew this experience" of an alliance with the hardleft.

"The election shows that the Portuguese like the 'geringonca', they like this political solution," he said as supporters chanted "Victory!".

"Stability is essential for Portugal's credibility and for attracting investors. The PS will strive to find solutions that ensure this stability for the entire legislature."

Both the Left Bloc, which won 19 seats just as in the last election, and the Communists, which won 12 seats, five fewer than in the last polls, said they were willing to once again back the Socialists.

A strengthened PS has more alternatives to get laws approved in parliament, political analyst Pedro Norton said.

"This is an incentive for it to govern alone, by searching for ad hoc agreements" to govern instead of forming a formal agreement, he told public television RTP.

The election gave Costa another potential governing partner as the upstart People-Animals-Nature party, which has backed his budgets in the past, won four seats, up from just one.

After coming to power in 2015, Costa undid some of the unpopular austerity measures introduced by the previous PSD-led government in return for a $85-billion international bailout that kept finances afloat after Portugal was clobbered by the eurozone debt crisis.

Taking advantage of the global economic recovery, he reversed cuts to public sector wages and pensions while still managing to bring the budget deficit down to nearly zero this year - the lowest level since Portugal's return to democracy in 1974.