Last Sunday, Portugal — one of the countries hardest hit by austerity — held national elections.

For many mainstream commentators, the result was a vindication of these policies, with a right-wing coalition winning again. But the Right’s total share of the vote dropped and the radical left’s total rose, with the Left Bloc enjoying its best showing ever. This was an unexpected outcome, but it raises new questions about what the Left has to do to seriously contend for power and how Portuguese politics will realign in the future.

The triumph of the right-wing coalition Portugal First’s (PaF) was not anticipated until a few weeks ago, when they finally overtook the center-left opposition Socialist Party (PS) in the polls. The coalition is composed of the Social Democratic Party and the Popular Party, the two right-wing parties (whatever their names) that governed Portugal over the last four years and applied troika-mandated austerity. Although they didn’t manage to win an absolute majority and their votes dropped to 36.9 percent, many people find it hard to understand how an unpopular government instituting unpopular policies could stay in power.