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1976 Portuguese legislative election
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
Prime Minister before election; Vasco de Almeida e Costa (interim); Independent	Prime Minister after election ; Mário Soares; PS

The 1976 Portuguese legislative election was held on Sunday 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 economic recovery and strengthening its democratic institutions. The election renewed all 263 members of the Assembly of the Republic.

The Socialist Party won a plurality of votes, almost 35 percent, and legislative seats, and its leader Mário Soares became the Prime Minister of the 1st Constitutional Government on 23 July 1976. The lack of a socialist majority forced his party to form an unexpected coalition with the Democratic and Social Center, a right-wing party. The nature of this coalition, between a socialist party and a conservative party that voted against the new constitution because of its socialist influences, surprised most Portuguese voters and marked the start of the Socialist Party's right-wing turn that would soon be attacked by all the left due to the new government's measures against left-wing reforms following the Carnation Revolution, mainly concerning agrarian reform, in what was called the PS putting "Socialism in the drawer".^[1]

The Social Democratic Party (then known as the Democratic People's Party, PPD) won the second most votes and seats, 24 percent of the votes, but polled 10 points below the PS. The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) achieved considerable gains that reflected its growing influence, mainly in the south of the country, gaining 14 percent of the votes. The big surprise in the elections was the strong showing of the Democratic and Social Center (CDS), which polled ahead of PCP and gathered 16 percent of the votes. Only 19 years later, in 1995, would the CDS again surpass the PCP in number of votes.

Voter turnout fell to 83.5 percent, compared with the 91.7 percent just a year before.

Background

Ongoing Revolutionary Process

The previous elections, held on April 25, 1975, elected a new assembly to write a new Constitution. The election results gave the two main moderate parties (PS and PPD) a clear majority in Parliament, with almost 38 percent for the PS and more than 26 percent for the PPD. The PCP achieved a weak result, just 12.5 percent, while the CDS polled ahead of the MDP. The election results started a conflict of legitimacy between parties, the Armed Forces Movement and the Revolutionary Council. It was the start of the Ongoing Revolutionary Process, which culminated in the Hot Summer of 1975.

On May 1, 1975, the PS and the PCP held separate rallies and some violent clashes occurred between PS and PCP supporters.^[2] A few days later, in what was called "The República case", far-left supporters invaded the headquarters of República newspaper. The reason was a strike by the typographers and other workers, many close to the far-left UDP, accusing the editorial board of being too aligned with the PS.^[3] The case drew widespread international attention, and the PS started a full blown attack against the PCP and Prime Minister Vasco Gonçalves government.

Positions become extreme as Vasco Gonçalves led the Ongoing Revolutionary Process. He started facing big opposition from the so-called "reactionaries" (the Catholic Church, groups close to the former Estado Novo regime and, unofficially, from the PS, PPD and CDS.), therefore, Vasco Gonçalves continued and forced his Democratic socialism policies with the nationalization of huge parts of the Portuguese economy.^[4]

Hot Summer of 1975

By the beginning of the summer of 1975, the country was deeply divided. The "Hot summer of 1975" was starting. During this period, huge clashes between left and right supporters spread all across the country, some with big violence. The possibility of the country entering in a full blown Civil war was feared by many.^[5] On 19 July 1975, the PS held a massive rally in Lisbon, with the help of the Catholic Church and others, to fight against the PCP and Vasco Gonçalves government. Mário Soares, PS leader, accused the Gonçalves government, and those who support it, of being "Paranoids", "Demented" and "Irresponsibles who do not represent the Portuguese people".^[6]

During the summer of 1975, headquarters of the PCP, and other left-wing parties, in many cities in the North and Center of the country were vandalized and destroyed. Many leftwing supporters were also violently beaten by anti-left protesters.^[7] The violence and increased tensions across the country were damaging Vasco Gonçalves leadership in the government and divisions between the Armed Forces Movement and the Revolutionary Council were starting to show. When COPCON commander, Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, withdrew his support from Gonçalves, the government was on its last days. On 20 September, Gonçalves leaves the government and Pinheiro de Azevedo is nominated as Prime Minister.^[8] Shortly after, on 26 September, the assault of the Spanish embassy in Lisbon by far-left supporters, in retaliation to the attacks on left-wing parties headquarters in the North and Center, drew widespread attention as it was broadcast by US network CBS.^[9]

25 November Coup and normalization

The new government was unable to control the tensions in the country and by mid November the government made the extraordinary announcement that they were on strike because there were no conditions to govern the country.^[10] Just before this announcement, construction workers unions surrounded Parliament and blocked MPs from leaving the building for two days.^[11]

All of this culminated in the events of the Coup of 25 November 1975. The coup was an attempted by left-wing activists who hoped to hijack the Portuguese transition to democracy in favor of Communists. The coup failed and shortly after a counter-coup led by Ramalho Eanes, a pro-democracy moderate, and supported by PS leader Mário Soares, re-established the democratic process.^[12]

By March 1976, the Constitutional Assembly finally drafted the Constitution text and was sent to approval in April 1976. The Constitution draft was heavily ideological, with many references to Socialism and with many phrases that echoed Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. On 2 April 1976, the new Constitution was approved with the votes of all parties with the exception of CDS, which voted against citing the ideological content of the document. However, the party agreed to abide by it in the interim.^[13]

Electoral system

The Assembly of the Republic has 263 members elected to four-year terms. The total number of MPs increased to 263 from the 1975 total of 250 MPs. 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 132 (absolute majority) for both the Government's Programme to be rejected or for a motion of no confidence to be approved.^[14]

The number of seats assigned to each district depends on the district magnitude.^[15] 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.^[16]

For these elections, and compared with the 1975 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following:^[17]

District	Number of MPs	Map
Lisbon⁽⁺³⁾	58	15 7 38 7 5 15 11 6 12 7 11 13 58 4 6 17 6 9 6 3 2 1 2 2
Porto⁽⁺²⁾	38
Setúbal⁽⁺¹⁾	17
Aveiro⁽⁺¹⁾ and Braga	15
Santarém	13
Coimbra	12
Leiria and Viseu⁽⁺¹⁾	11
Faro	9
Castelo Branco, Viana do Castelo⁽⁺¹⁾ and Vila Real⁽⁺¹⁾	7
Beja, Évora⁽⁺¹⁾, Guarda and Funchal	6
Bragança⁽⁺¹⁾	5
Portalegre	4
Ponta Delgada	3
Angra do Heroísmo, Europe and Outside Europe	2
Horta	1

Parties

The table below lists the parties represented in the Assembly of the Republic during the Constitutional Assembly (1975–1976) and that also, some, contested the elections:

Name			Ideology	Political position	Leader	1975 result
Name			Ideology	Political position	Leader	%	Seats
	PS	Socialist Party Partido Socialista	Social democracy	Centre-left	Mário Soares	37.9%	116 / 250
	PPD	Democratic People's Party Partido Popular Democrático	Liberalism	Centre	Francisco Sá Carneiro	26.4%	81 / 250
	PCP	Portuguese Communist Party Partido Comunista Português	Communism	Far-left	Álvaro Cunhal	12.5%	30 / 250
	CDS	Democratic and Social Center Centro Democrático e Social	Christian democracy	Centre-right	Diogo Freitas do Amaral	7.6%	16 / 250
	MDP/CDE^[a]	Portuguese Democratic Movement Movimento Democrático Português	Left-wing nationalism Democratic socialism	Left-wing	José Manuel Tengarrinha	4.1%	5 / 250
	UDP	Popular Democratic Union União Democrática Popular	Marxism Socialism	Left-wing	Mário Tomé	0.8%	1 / 250
	ADIM^[a]	Association for the Defense of Macau Interests Associação para a Defesa dos Interesses de Macau	Conservatism Macau interests	Right-wing	Diamantino Ferreira	0.0%	1 / 250

Campaign period

Party slogans

	Original slogan	English translation	Refs
PS	« Queremos e podemos reconstruir o país »	"We want and we can rebuild the country"	^[18]
PPD	« Portugal com Sá Carneiro »	"Portugal with Sá Carneiro"	^[19]
PCP	« Para uma maioria de esquerda »	"For a left-wing majority"	^[20]
CDS	« A resposta é muito simples »	"The answer is very simple"	^[21]

Candidates' debates

The day after the elections, a round table was held on RTP1, moderated by Carlos Veiga Pereira, on the electoral results, with the participation of Mário Soares (Socialist Party), Francisco Sá Carneiro, (Social Democratic Party), Diogo Freitas do Amaral (Social Democratic Center), and Filipe Faria (UDP). Álvaro Cunhal (Portuguese Communist Party) declined to participate in the roundtable.

1975 Portuguese Constituent Assembly election
Date	Organisers	Moderator(s)	P Present S Absent invitee N Non-invitee
			PS	PPD	CDS	PCP	UDP	Refs
								Refs
26 Apr	RTP1	Carlos Veiga Pereira	Soares	Sá Carneiro	Freitas	A	Faria	^[22]

Results

Summary of the 25 April 1976 Assembly of the Republic elections results
Party		Votes	%	+/–	Seats	+/–

	Socialist Party	1,912,921	34.89	–2.98	107	–9
	Democratic People's Party	1,335,381	24.35	–2.04	73	–8
	Democratic and Social Centre	876,007	15.98	+8.37	42	+26
	Portuguese Communist Party	788,830	14.39	+1.93	40	+10
	People's Democratic Union	91,690	1.67	+0.88	1	±0
	People's Socialist Front	42,162	0.77	–0.39	0	±0
	Reorganizing Movement of the Party of the Proletariat	36,200	0.66	New	0	New
	Movement of Socialist Left	31,332	0.57	–0.45	0	±0
	Christian Democratic Party	29,874	0.54	New	0	New
	People's Monarchist Party	28,320	0.52	–0.05	0	±0
	Internationalist Communist League	16,269	0.30	+0.11	0	±0
	Communist Party of Portugal	15,830	0.29	New	0	New
	Worker-Peasant Alliance	15,778	0.29	New	0	New
	Workers' Revolutionary Party	5,171	0.09	New	0	New
	Portuguese Democratic Movement^[a]	0	0.00	–4.14	0	–5
	Association for the Defense of Macau Interests^[a]	0	0.00	–0.03	0	–1
Total		5,225,765	95.30		263	+13

Valid votes		5,225,765	95.30	+2.25
Invalid/blank votes		257,696	4.70	–2.25
Total votes cast		5,483,461	100.00
Registered voters/turnout		6,564,667	83.53	–8.13
Source: Comissão Nacional de Eleições

Vote share

PS			34.89%
PPD			24.35%
CDS			15.98%
PCP			14.39%
UDP			1.67%
FSP			0.77%
MRPP			0.66%
MES			0.57%
PDC			0.54%
PPM			0.52%
Others			0.97%
Blank/Invalid			4.70%

Parliamentary seats

PS			40.68%
PPD			27.76%
CDS			15.97%
PCP			15.51%
UDP			0.38%

Distribution by constituency

Results of the 1976 election of the Portuguese Assembly of the Republic
by constituency
Constituency	%	S	%	S	%	S	%	S	%	S	Total S
Constituency	PS		PPD		CDS		PCP		UDP		Total S
Angra do Heroísmo	30.4	1	51.8	1	12.1	-	1.5	-			2
Aveiro	30.8	5	35.2	6	22.5	4	3.7	-	0.9	-	15
Beja	32.0	2	8.2	-	4.2	-	44.0	4	2.2	-	6
Braga	32.3	6	28.6	5	21.2	4	4.2	-	1.0	-	15
Bragança	22.6	1	33.3	2	28.3	2	2.7	-	0.8	-	5
Castelo Branco	36.4	3	22.6	2	19.9	2	6.7	-	1.1	-	7
Coimbra	40.9	6	26.7	4	12.5	1	7.3	1	1.2	-	12
Évora	30.3	2	9.2	-	8.0	-	43.2	4	2.6	-	6
Faro	44.6	6	19.3	2	6.8	-	14.5	1	2.6	-	9
Funchal	24.9	1	53.0	4	13.3	1	1.5	-	1.3	-	6
Guarda	25.2	2	25.7	2	32.1	2	2.9	-	1.1	-	6
Horta	34.2	-	57.0	1	4.3	-	1.5	-			1
Leiria	31.1	4	31.2	4	19.4	2	7.3	1	1.0	-	11
Lisbon	38.3	25	16.4	10	13.2	8	21.8	14	2.6	1	58
Ponta Delgada	35.4	1	45.6	2	11.8	-	1.5	-			3
Portalegre	41.9	3	10.1	-	13.9	-	22.0	1	1.0	-	4
Porto	40.7	18	27.0	11	15.7	6	8.4	3	1.5	-	38
Santarém	38.5	6	19.5	3	13.9	2	16.1	2	1.7	-	13
Setúbal	32.2	7	8.4	1	4.4	-	44.4	9	2.8	-	17
Viana do Castelo	25.5	2	32.8	3	23.5	2	6.6	-	0.9	-	7
Vila Real	26.3	2	39.0	4	18.3	1	3.1	-	0.9	-	7
Viseu	23.0	3	32.2	4	31.2	4	2.3	-	0.9	-	11
Europe	46.1	1	32.2	1	6.9	-	10.1	-	0.8	-	2
Rest of the World	6.3	-	53.2	1	33.7	1	1.4	-	0.4	-	2
Total	34.9	107	24.4	73	16.0	42	14.4	40	1.7	1	263
Source: Comissão Nacional de Eleições

Maps

Winner and seats by constituency.
Most voted political force by municipality.

Aftermath

Fall of the government

By the fall of 1977, the situation of the Portuguese economy was deteriorating. During that year's summer, Prime Minister Mário Soares asked for a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and several austerity measures were implemented like the rise of interest rates, devalue of the Escudo and budget cuts.^[23]^[24] However, the policies were quite unpopular and by late 1977 Soares was facing large opposition in the Parliament. In November 1977, he proposed a sizeable memorandum between parties and associations to seek common economic and social policies, which was rejected.^[25] Because of this rejection, Soares presented a motion of confidence in Parliament, which he lost by a 59 vote margin.^[26]

Ballot →		8 December 1977
Motion of confidence Mário Soares (PS)
Required majority →		132 out of 263 N
	Yes • PS (100)	100 / 263
	No • PSD (72) • CDS (41) • PCP (40) • UDP (1) • Ind. Carmelinda Pereira (1) • Ind. Aires Rodrigues (1) • Ind. José Justiniano Pinto (1) • Ind. António Lopes Cardoso (1) • Ind. Reinaldo Rodrigues (1)	159 / 263
	Abstentions	0 / 263
	Absentees • PS (2) • PSD (1) • Ind. Carlos Galvão de Melo (1)	4 / 263
Sources^[27]^[28]

Following this vote, Soares was still able to form a second cabinet, in coalition with the Democratic Social Center (CDS), but it only lasted 8 months^[29] and after August 1978, a series of Presidential appointed cabinets were nominated which culminated in the 2 December 1979 snap election.