1979 Portuguese legislative election

Background

Fall of the government

In the last election, three and a half years before, in April 1976, the Socialist Party, under the lead of Mário Soares, won the elections and became the Prime-Minister of the 1st Constitutional Government after the revolution.

However, the Government suffered several attacks and in December 1977, Soares lost a voting of confidence in Parliament, 159 to 100, as all Opposition parties, the Democratic and Social Center, the Social Democrats and the Communists united in order to vote against it, and so, the Soares' government fell. Soares would become Prime Minister again in January 1978, in coalition with the Democratic Social Center, but in July this party would force the end of the government due to disagreements about agrarian reforms. In August, Nobre da Costa became prime minister by personal decision of President Ramalho Eanes, after a failed attempt to unite the parties on the Parliament. However, the program of Nobre da Costa's government was never approved and two months later, Nobre da Costa was replaced by Mota Pinto who would govern with extreme difficulties for less than one year.

In July 1979, the President finally decided to dissolve the Parliament and call for a new election for December of the same year. Mota Pinto was replaced in the period between the dissolution and the election by Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, the first and still only woman to lead a government in Portuguese history.

Leadership changes and challenges

PSD 1978 leadership election

The PSD suffered a lot of internal division after the 1976 election. The party was essential divided between those who want the party to pursue a more social democratic path, and those who want a more centrist to center-right approach, these aligned with Francisco Sá Carneiro. Because of these disputes, Sá Carneiro leaves the leadership in November 1977, and is succeeded by António Sousa Franco, who leads the party more to the left. But, internal divisions continue, and in June 1978, a group of 42 PSD MPs release the "Unpostponable Options" manifesto where they attack Sá Carneiro and reaffirm the Social Democratic path with the candidacy to the Socialist International. Sá Carneiro returns to the leadership in the 1978 July party congress and 37 PSD MPs leave definitely the party and form the Independent Social Democratic Action (ASDI), which will merge with the PS a few years later. |- style="background-color:#E9E9E9" ! align="center" colspan=2 style="width: 60px"|Candidate ! align="center" style="width: 50px"|Votes ! align="center" style="width: 50px"|%

A few months after the congress that reinstated Sá Carneiro in the party's leadership, the PSD, CDS and PPM reach an agreement to form the Democratic Alliance, in order to contest the following elections.

Electoral system

The Assembly of the Republic has 250 members elected to four-year terms. The total number of MPs was reduced to 250 from the previous 263, elected in 1976. 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 126 (absolute majority) 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 1976 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following:

Parties

The table below lists the parties represented in the Assembly of the Republic during the first half of the 1st legislature (1976–1980), as this election was a national by-election, and that also contested the elections:

With the 1976 seat distribution

Seat changes

• In January 1977, MPs Carmelinda Pereira and Aires Rodrigues were expelled from the Socialist Party caucus.
• In March 1977, MP Carlos Galvão de Melo left the Democratic and Social Center caucus.
• In November 1977, MPs António Lopes Cardoso, José Justiniano Pinto and Reinaldo Rodrigues left the Socialist Party caucus due to disagreements with the government led by Mário Soares.
• On July 1979, 37 MPs from the Social Democratic Party, led by António de Sousa Franco and Joaquim Magalhães Mota, left the party and formed a new party, the Independent Social Democratic Action, following a feud with PSD leader Francisco Sá Carneiro, in which was called the "Unpostponable Options" split, regarding the ideological path of the party.

1976 results with the new seat distribution

Campaign period

Party slogans

Results

National summary

Distribution by constituency

|- class="unsortable" !rowspan=2|Constituency!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S !rowspan=2|Total S |- class="unsortable" style="text-align:center;" !colspan=2 | AD !colspan=2 | PS !colspan=2 | APU !colspan=2 | PSD !colspan=2 | UDP |- | 30.0 | 2

Maps

File:1979 Portuguese legislative election district results.svg|Winner and seats by constituency. File:Legislativas portuguesas de 1979 (Mapa).png|Most voted political force by municipality.

Notes

| As leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD).

| Democratic Alliance results are compared to the combined totals of the Social Democratic Party, the Democratic and Social Centre and the People's Monarchist Party in the 1976 election.

| The Social Democratic Party (PSD), the Democratic Social Center (CDS) and the People's Monarchist Party (PPM) would contest the 1979 election in a coalition called Democratic Alliance (AD).

| The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and the Portuguese Democratic Movement (MDP/CDE) would contest the 1979 election in a coalition called United People Alliance (APU).

| Alliance formed by the Social Democratic Party (73 seats), the Democratic and Social Centre (43 seats) and the People's Monarchist Party (5 seats).

| Social Democratic Party and Democratic and Social Centre electoral list only in Azores and Madeira.

| Portuguese Communist Party (44 MPs) and Portuguese Democratic Movement (3 MPs) ran in coalition.

References

References

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