2019 Portuguese legislative election
The Portuguese legislative election of 2019 was held on 6 October 2019. All 230 seats to the Assembly of the Republic were at stake.
In a campaign dominated by the Tancos airbase robbery, in which former Defense Minister Azeredo Lopes was accused of trying to cover-up the finding of the stolen weapons in the robbery, but also with the good economic situation Portugal was living, the Socialist Party won the elections with 36% of the votes and 108 seats, a gain of 22 compared with 2015. The PS won the big districts of Porto and Lisbon, although Porto was closer than expected, and was able to gain districts from the PSD, like Aveiro and Viana do Castelo, however, by razor thin margins. The PS won Lisbon city, however with a smaller share of the vote compared with 2015, 33% vs 35%, and, surprisingly, lost Porto city to the PSD.
The Social Democratic Party obtained 28% of the votes and won 79 seats. The party lost 10 seats compared with 2015, and, in terms of share of vote, it was the worst result since 1983, however in terms of seats, it was only the worst result since 2005, when the party won 75 seats. The PSD was able to hold on to their bastions of Viseu, Vila Real, Bragança, Leiria and Madeira. On election night, PSD leader Rui Rio classified the results as "not a disaster" and left the door open to continue as party leader. However, in the aftermath of the election, several members of the party announced their intention to challenge Rio's leadership.
The Left Bloc achieved a similar result to 2015. The party won almost 10% of the votes and held the 19 seats elected in 2015. On election night, Catarina Martins said she was open to new negotiations with PS. The Unitary Democratic Coalition,, PCP-PEV coalition, suffered heavy losses, with 6.3% of the votes and 12 seats, and Jerónimo de Sousa, PCP secretary-general, said on election night that written agreements with PS were off the table. CDS – People's Party got just 4.2% of the votes, and got a parliamentary caucus reduced to just 5 seats, the lowest since 1991 and when the party was called the "taxi party", down from 18 in the 2015 election. Assunção Cristas, CDS leader, resigned on election night, called for a snap party congress and announced she would not run for reelection. People-Animals-Nature saw a big increase in its share of the vote, winning 3.3% and 4 seats from Lisbon, Porto and Setúbal.
This election was marked by the entry of three new parties in Parliament. The right-wing/far-right party CHEGA was one of the big surprises on election night by electing an MP from Lisbon. It is the first time in Portuguese democracy that a right-wing/far-right party is represented in Parliament. LIVRE and Liberal Initiative also elected one MP for Lisbon. Former Prime Minister and PSD leader Pedro Santana Lopes' new party, Alliance, failed to win a single seat and polled below 1% of the votes.
The turnout in this election was the lowest ever in a general election in Portugal, with just 48.6% of registered voters casting a ballot. In Portugal alone, 54.5% of voters cast a ballot, a drop compared with the 57% in the 2015 election.
Background
Politics of Portugal
The President of Portugal has the power to dissolve the Assembly of the Republic by their own will. Unlike in other countries, the President can refuse to dissolve the parliament at the request of the Prime Minister or the Assembly of the Republic and all the parties represented in Parliament. If the Prime Minister resigns, the President must appoint a new Prime Minister after listening to all the parties represented in Parliament and then the government programme must be subject to discussion by the Assembly of the Republic, whose members of parliament may present a motion to reject the upcoming government.PSD leadership election 2018
After a disappointing result in the 2017 local elections, in which the PSD won just 30% of the votes and 98 mayoral races against the 38% of the PS and its 160 elected mayors, Pedro Passos Coelho announced he would not run for a 5th term as PSD leader. After that, Rui Rio, former mayor of Porto, announced he was running for the leadership. Shortly after, Pedro Santana Lopes, former mayor of Lisbon and Prime Minister, announced he was also running for the leadership of the party. Election day was scheduled to January 13, 2018. After a long campaign, Rui Rio was elected with 54.15% of the votes, against the 45.85% of Santana Lopes. Turnout was 60.3%. Rui Rio was officially confirmed as party leader in the PSD congress, in Lisbon, between 16 and 18 February 2018.Just seven months after this leadership election, in early July 2018, Pedro Santana Lopes announced he was leaving the Social Democratic Party and would form his own party. A few weeks later he announced the creation of a new party, the Alliance.
Date
According to the Portuguese Constitution, an election must be called between 14 September and 14 October of the year that the legislature ends. The election is called by the President of Portugal but is not called at the request of the Prime Minister; however, the President must listen to all of the parties represented in Parliament and the election day must be announced at least 60 days before the election. If an election is called during an ongoing legislature it must be held at least in 55 days. Election day is the same in all multi-seats constituencies, and should fall on a Sunday or national holiday. The next legislative election must, therefore, take place no later than 13 October 2019. After meeting with all parties, in December 2018, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announced that he would call a general election for 6 October 2019.Electoral system
The Assembly of the Republic has 230 members elected to four-year terms. Governments do not require absolute majority support of the Assembly to hold office, as even if the number of opposers of government is larger than that of the supporters, the number of opposers still needs to be equal or greater than 116 for both the Government's Programme to be rejected or for a motion of no confidence to be approved.The number of seats assigned to each district depends on the district magnitude. The use of the d'Hondt method makes for a higher effective threshold than certain other allocation methods such as the Hare quota or Sainte-Laguë method, which are more generous to small parties.
For these elections, and compared with the 2015 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following:
Parties
The table below lists parties currently represented in the Assembly of the Republic.Campaign period
Party slogans
Candidates' debates
Opinion polling
Results
The centre-left Socialist Party of incumbent Prime Minister Costa obtained the largest share of the vote, and the most seats. Costa said he would look to continue the confidence-and-supply agreement with the Left Bloc and the Unitary Democratic Coalition. The centre-right Social Democratic Party got 27.8 percent of the vote, its worst result since 1983. Portugal's much-vaunted immunity to Europe's far-right wave was interrupted by the election of a debut representative from the nationalist CHEGA party, which scored 1.3 percent overall, with the party's leader stating “this is an historic occasion, it will be the first time in 45 years that a party with these characteristics enters the assembly.”National summary
Distribution by constituency
!rowspan=2|Constituency!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!rowspan=2|Total
S
!colspan=2 | PS
!colspan=2 | PSD
!colspan=2 | BE
!colspan=2 | CDU
!colspan=2 | CDS–PP
!colspan=2 | PAN
!colspan=2 | CH
!colspan=2 | IL
!colspan=2 | L