1985 Portuguese legislative election

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1985 Portuguese legislative election
← 1983 6 October 1985 1987 →
250 seats to the Portuguese Assembly
125 seats needed for a majority
Registered7,818,981 Increase6.6%
Turnout5,798,929 (74.2%)
Decrease3.6 pp
  First party Second party Third party
 
Leader Aníbal Cavaco Silva Almeida Santos Hermínio Martinho
Party PSD PS PRD
Leader since 2 June 1985 13 June 1985 (interim) 10 July 1985
Leader's seat Lisbon[1] Porto[2] Santarem
Last election 75 seats, 27.2% 101 seats, 36.1% New party
Seats won 88 57 45
Seat change Increase 13 Decrease 44 N/A
Popular vote 1,732,288 1,204,321 1,038,893
Percentage 29.9% 20.8% 17.9%
Swing Increase 2.7 pp Decrease 15.3 pp N/A
  Fourth party Fifth party
 
Leader Álvaro Cunhal Lucas Pires
Party PCP CDS
Alliance APU
Leader since 1979 20 February 1983
Leader's seat Lisbon Lisbon
Last election 44 seats, 18.1% 30 seats, 12.6%
Seats won 38 22
Seat change Decrease 6 Decrease 8
Popular vote 898,281 577,580
Percentage 15.5% 10.0%
Swing Decrease 2.6 pp Decrease 2.6 pp
Prime Minister before election

Mário Soares
PS

Elected Prime Minister

Aníbal Cavaco Silva
PSD

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

The Portuguese legislative election of 1985 took place on 6 October. In June of the same year, the former Prime-Minister, Mário Soares, had resigned from the job due to the lack of parliamentary support, the government was composed by a coalition of the two major parties, the center-right Social Democratic and the center-left Socialist, in what was called the Central Bloc, however this was an unstable balance of forces and several members of each party opposed such alliance.

The new leader of the Social Democratic Party, Cavaco Silva, elected in May, was among those that never supported such alliance, and short after being elected leader of the party made the coalition fall in July.

A new election was called by the President and the Social Democrats won with a short majority and Cavaco became the Prime-Minister. The election was the first of three consecutive election victories for the Social Democratic Party. Meanwhile, a new party had been founded by supporters of the President Ramalho Eanes, the Democratic Renewal Party, led by Hermínio Martinho that surprisingly gained 45 MPs and more than one million votes in the election and became the parliamentary support of the Cavaco's government until 1987, when it removed its support, making Cavaco fall.

The Communists and the Socialists lost votes and MPs, and the left would only return to the government ten years later, in 1995.

Electoral system

The Assembly of the Republic has 250 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 126 (absolute majority) for both the Government's Programme to be rejected or for a motion of no confidence to be approved.[3]

The number of seats assigned to each district depends on the district magnitude.[4] 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.[5]

Parties

The major parties involved and the respective leaders:

Aníbal Cavaco Silva, leader of the Social Democratic Party, was nominated Prime Minister for the first time.

Campaign period

Party slogans

Party or alliance Original slogan English translation Refs
width="1" bgcolor="Template:Socialist Party (Portugal)/meta/color"| PS « O que prometo, faço. Vamos a isto. » "What I promise, I do. Let's do this." [6]
bgcolor="Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color"| PSD « Retomar a esperança » "Resuming hope" [7]
bgcolor="Template:Unitary Democratic Coalition/meta/color"| APU « Vitória da APU para salvar o país » "Victory for APU to save the country" [8]
bgcolor="Template:CDS – People's Party/meta/color"| CDS « Confiança, razão, força para Portugal » "Trust, reason, strength for Portugal" [9]
PRD « Mais Portugal » "More Portugal" [10]

Candidates' debates

1985 Portuguese legislative election debates
Date Organisers Moderator(s)     P  Present    A  Absent invitee  N  Non-inviteee 
PS
Santos 		PSD
Cavaco 		APU
Cunhal 		CDS
Pires 		Refs
style="background:Template:Socialist Party (Portugal)/meta/color;"| style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color;"| style="background:Template:Unitary Democratic Coalition/meta/color;"| style="background:Template:CDS – People's Party/meta/color;"|
3 Sep RTP1 P A[a] P P [11]
5 Sep RTP1 N A[b] P P [12]
10 Sep RTP1 P P N P [13]
12 Sep RTP1 P P P N [13]
Candidate viewed as "most convincing" in each debate
Date Organisers Polling firm/Link
PS PSD APU CDS Notes
style="background:Template:Socialist Party (Portugal)/meta/color;"| style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color;"| style="background:Template:Unitary Democratic Coalition/meta/color;"| style="background:Template:CDS – People's Party/meta/color;"|
3 Sep RTP1 Expresso 36 — 23 25 16% Neither

Opinion polling

See also: Exit poll and Opinion poll

The following table shows the opinion polls of voting intention of the Portuguese voters before the election. Those parties that are listed are currently represented in parliament. Included is also the result of the Portuguese general elections in 1983 and 1985 for reference.

Date Released Polling Firm PS PSD APU CDS PRD Others Lead
6 Oct 1985 Leg. Election 20.8
57 seats 		29.9
88 seats 		15.5
38 seats 		10.0
22 seats 		17.9
45 seats 		5.9
0 seats 		9.1
6 Oct (22:50) RTP1 22.0–26.9 26.8–29.7 15.0–18.1 9.3–10.8 14.5–16.5 – 2.8–4.8
6 Oct (21:10) RTP1 23.8–26.9 28.0–29.8 17.3–18.1 9.8–10.7 11.1–14.9 – 2.9–6.0
6 Oct Rádio Comercial 19.0–22.0 29.0–31.0 14.0–16.0 8.0–16.0 18.0–22.0 – 9.0–10.0
Exit polls
4 Oct Expresso 28.0–32.0 27.0–31.0 15.0–17.0 9.0–12.0 8.0–11.0 – 1.0
1985
25 Apr 1983 Leg. Election 36.1
101 seats 		27.2
75 seats 		18.1
44 seats 		12.6
30 seats 		Did not exist 6.0
0 seats 		8.9

National summary of votes and seats

Template:Portuguese parliamentary election, 1985

Vote share
PSD
 
 29.87%
PS
 
 20.77%
PRD
 
 17.92%
APU
 
 15.49%
CDS
 
 9.96%
UDP
 
 1.27%
PDC
 
 0.72%
PSR
 
 0.61%
Others
 
 0.89%
Blank/Invalid
 
 2.51%
Parliamentary seats
PSD
 
 35.20%
PS
 
 22.80%
PRD
 
 18.00%
APU
 
 15.20%
CDS
 
 8.80%

Distribution by constituency

e • d Results of the 1985 election of the Portuguese Assembly of the Republic
by constituency
Constituency % S % S % S % S % S Total
S
PSD PS PRD APU CDS
Azores style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|48.3 3 20.1 1 15.2 1 4.4 - 6.5 - 5
Aveiro style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|38.4 6 23.0 4 13.4 2 6.5 1 13.5 2 15
Beja 13.7 1 20.1 1 11.6 - 44.9 3 2.2 - 5
Braga style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|32.8 6 21.8 4 16.8 3 8.5 1 14.0 2 16
Bragança style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|39.2 2 22.7 1 6.9 - 5.3 - 17.1 1 4
Castelo Branco style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|31.2 3 18.5 1 24.4 2 8.9 - 9.6 - 6
Coimbra style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|29.5 4 28.5 3 16.9 2 10.1 1 8.6 1 11
EvoraÉvora 19.1 1 14.3 1 15.8 1 41.2 2 3.3 - 5
Faro style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|28.4 3 22.3 2 20.5 2 15.4 2 6.1 - 9
Guarda style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|33.6 2 23.3 2 10.9 - 5.2 - 19.5 1 5
Leiria style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|38.6 5 19.6 2 15.3 2 7.9 1 12.2 1 11
Lisbon style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|25.6 15 19.8 12 21.3 13 20.1 12 8.1 4 56
Madeira style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|56.8 4 13.2 1 9.7 - 3.2 - 7.8 - 5
Portalegre 20.9 1 23.7 1 18.9 - 25.2 1 4.9 - 3
Porto style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|29.3 12 23.6 10 20.5 8 12.1 5 9.8 4 39
Santarém style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|27.8 4 18.6 2 23.8 3 16.4 2 7.7 1 12
Setúbal 15.4 3 16.5 3 20.4 4 38.2 7 3.8 - 17
Viana do Castelo style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|33.5 3 18.4 1 16.2 1 8.2 - 16.6 1 6
Vila Real style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|42.2 3 23.0 2 8.6 - 5.9 - 12.5 1 6
Viseu style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|37.7 5 20.0 2 10.9 1 5.0 - 19.9 2 10
zEurope style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|24.3 1 24.2 1 7.1 - 18.8 - 17.3 - 2
zRest of the World style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|40.5 1 7.8 - 3.3 - 2.6 - 37.9 1 2
Total style="background:Template:Social Democratic Party (Portugal)/meta/color; color:white;"|29.9 88 20.8 57 17.9 45 15.5 38 10.0 22 250
Source: Comissão Nacional de Eleições

Maps

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Aníbal Cavaco Silva, PSD leader, refused to participate in the debate.
  2. ^ Aníbal Cavaco Silva, PSD leader, refused to participate in the debate, being replaced by Eurico de Melo, however, the latter was forbidden from participating.Fundação Mário Soares 1985


References

  1. ^ Assembleia da República - Deputados e Grupos Parlamentares
  2. ^ Assembleia da República - Deputados e Grupos Parlamentares
  3. ^ "Constitution of the Portuguese Republic" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2019-12-29.
  4. ^ "Effective threshold in electoral systems". Trinity College, Dublin. Retrieved 2015-10-21.
  5. ^ Gallaher, Michael (1992). "Comparing Proportional Representation Electoral Systems: Quotas, Thresholds, Paradoxes and Majorities"
  6. ^ "ELEIÇÕES LEGISLATIVAS DE 1985 – PS". EPHEMERA (in Portuguese). Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  7. ^ "ELEIÇÕES LEGISLATIVAS DE 1985 – PSD". EPHEMERA (in Portuguese). Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  8. ^ "ELEIÇÕES LEGISLATIVAS DE 1985 – APU". EPHEMERA (in Portuguese). Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  9. ^ "ELEIÇÕES LEGISLATIVAS DE 1985 – CDS". EPHEMERA (in Portuguese). Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  10. ^ "Evolução da Comunicação Política e Eleitoral em Portugal" (in Portuguese). Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  11. ^ "Líderes partidários em confronto na TV". Fundação Mário Soares (in Portuguese). 1985. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  12. ^ "Álvaro Cunhal/Lucas Pires esta noite na RTP". Fundação Mário Soares (in Portuguese). 1985. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  13. ^ a b "Eleições ganham-se na TV?". Fundação Mário Soares (in Portuguese). 1985. Retrieved 11 May 2020.

Sources

External links


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