Portuguese legislative election, 1976

Portuguese legislative election, 1976

25 April 1976
263 seats to the Portuguese Assembly 132 seats needed for a majority
Registered	6,564,667 5.4%
Turnout	5,483,461 (83.5%) 8.2 pp
First party Second party   Leader Mário Soares Francisco Sá Carneiro Party PS PPD Leader since 19 April 1973 6 May 1974 Leader's seat Lisbon[1] Porto[2] Last election 116 seats, 37.9% 81 seats, 26.4% Seats won 107 73 Seat change 9 8 Popular vote 1,912,921 1,335,381 Percentage 34.9% 24.4% Swing 3.0 pp 2.0 pp   Third party Fourth party   Leader Diogo Freitas do Amaral Álvaro Cunhal Party CDS PCP Leader since 19 July 1974 31 March 1961 Leader's seat Lisbon Lisbon Last election 16 seats, 7.6% 30 seats, 12.5% Seats won 42 40 Seat change 26 10 Popular vote 876,077 788,830 Percentage 15.9% 14.4% Swing 8.4 pp 1.9 pp
Prime Minister before election Vasco de Almeida e Costa (interim) Independent Elected Prime Minister Mário Soares PS

This article is part of the series:
Politics and government of Portugal
Portugal

The Portuguese legislative election of 1976 took place on 25 April, exactly one year after the previous election, and two years after the Carnation Revolution. With a new Constitution approved, the country's main aim was the economical recovery and the strengthen of the democratic conquests.

The election was won again by the Socialist Party and Mário Soares, its leader, became the Prime-Minister of the 1st Constitutional government on 23 July. The lack of a socialist majority forced this party to form an unexpected coalition with the Democratic and Social Center, the party on the right end of the political spectrum at the time. The nature of such coalition, between a party that defended the socialist way to the country and another that voted against the constitution because of its socialist influences surprised most of the Portuguese voters and marked the start of the right-wing turn of the Socialist Party that would soon be attacked by all the left due to the new government measures against the left-wing conquests of the revolution, mainly the agrarian reform.

The Social Democratic Party (then known as the Democratic People's Party, PPD) was the second most voted party and the Portuguese Communist Party achieved a relevant increase in the voting, showing its growing influence, mainly in the south of the country.

Electoral system

In the first election after the approval of the new Constitution, the Parliament of the Portuguese Republic consists of a single chamber, the Assembly of the Republic, composed of 263 members directly elected by universal adult suffrage for a maximum term of four years. Assembly members represent the entire country, rather than the constituencies in which they were elected. Governments require majority support in the Assembly in order to remain in office.

Each one of Continental Portugal's eighteen administrative districts, plus the 4 districts in the country's two autonomous regions – Azores and Madeira – are an electoral constituency. Portuguese voters residing outside the national territory are grouped into two electoral constituencies – Europe and the rest of the world – each one of which elects two Assembly members. The remaining 259 seats are allocated among the national territory constituencies in proportion to their number of registered electors.

Political parties and party coalitions may present lists of candidates. The lists are closed, so electors may not choose individual candidates in or alter the order of such lists. Electors cast a ballot for a single list. The seats in each constituency are divided among parties according to the largest average method of proportional representation (PR), conceived by the Belgian mathematician Victor d'Hondt in 1899. Although there is no statutory threshold for participation in the allocation of Assembly seats, there is an effective threshold at the constituency level that depends on the district magnitude.^[3] The use of the d'Hondt method makes for a higher effective threshold than certain other allocation method such as the Hare quota or Sainte-Laguë method, which are more generous to small parties.^[4]

Parties

The major parties involved and the respective leaders:

• Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), Álvaro Cunhal
• Socialist Party (PS), Mário Soares
• Democratic People's Party (PPD), Francisco Sá Carneiro
• Democratic and Social Centre (CDS), Freitas do Amaral

National summary of votes and seats

 Summary of the 25 April 1976 Assembly of the Republic elections results

Parties		Votes	%	±	Seats					MPs %/ votes %
					1975	1976	±	%	±
	Socialist	1,912,921	34.89	3.0	116	107	9	40.68	5.7	1.17
	Democratic People's	1,335,381	24.35	2.0	81	73	8	27.76	4.6	1.14
	Democratic and Social Centre	876,077	15.98	8.4	16	42	26	15.97	9.6	1.00
	Communist	788,830	14.39	1.9	30	40	10	15.21	3.2	1.06
	People's Democratic Union	91,690	1.67	0.9	1	1	0	0.38	0.0	0.23
	People's Socialist Front	42,162	0.77	0.4	0	0	0	0.00	0.0	0.0
	Portuguese Workers' Communist	36,200	0.66	N/A	N/A	0	N/A	0.00	N/A	0.0
	Movement of Socialist Left	31,332	0.57	0.4	0	0	0	0.00	0.0	0.0
	Christian Democratic	29,874	0.54	N/A	N/A	0	N/A	0.00	N/A	0.0
	People's Monarchist	28,320	0.52	0.1	0	0	0	0.00	0.0	0.0
	Internationalist Communist League	16,269	0.30	0.1	0	0	0	0.00	0.0	0.0
	PCP(m-l)	15,830	0.29	N/A	N/A	0	N/A	0.00	N/A	0.0
	Worker-Peasant Alliance	15,778	0.29	N/A	N/A	0	N/A	0.00	N/A	0.0
	Revolutionary Socialist	5,171	0.09	N/A	N/A	0	N/A	0.00	N/A	0.0
Total valid		5,225,835	95.30	2.3	250[A]	263	13	100.00	0.0	—
Invalid ballots		257,696	4.70	2.3
Total (turnout 83.53%)		5,483,461	100.00	8.2
A Portuguese Democratic Movement won 5 seats and the Independent Democratic Association of Macau won 1 seat in the 1975 election. Both parties did not contested this election.
Source: Comissão Nacional de Eleições

References

External links

• Comissão Nacional de Eleições
• Centro de Estudos do Pensamento Político

See also

• Politics of Portugal
• List of political parties in Portugal
• Elections in Portugal