1991 Portuguese legislative election

← 1987 6 October 1991 1995 →
230 seats to the Portuguese Assembly 116 seats needed for a majority
Registered	8,462,357 6.7%
Turnout	5,735,431 (67.8%) 3.8 pp
First party Second party Third party   Leader Aníbal Cavaco Silva Jorge Sampaio Álvaro Cunhal Party PSD PS PCP Alliance CDU Leader since 2 June 1985 15 January 1989 30 September 1987 Leader's seat Lisbon[1] Lisbon[2] Lisbon Last election 148 seats, 50.2% 60 seats, 22.2% 31 seats, 12.1% Seats before 138† 56† 26† Seats won 135 72 17 Seat change 3* 16* 9* Popular vote 2,902,351 1,670,758 504,583 Percentage 50.6% 29.1% 8.8% Swing 0.4 pp 6.9 pp 3.3 pp   Fourth party Fifth party   PSN Leader Diogo Freitas do Amaral Manuel Sérgio Party CDS PSN Leader since 31 January 1988 26 June 1990 Leader's seat Lisbon[3] Lisbon Last election 4 seats, 4.4% Did not contest Seats before 4† — Seats won 5 1 Seat change 1* 1 Popular vote 254,317 96,096 Percentage 4.4% 1.7% Swing 0.0 pp New party
Vote winner strength by district. Results by constituency. * Indicates seat change, so this is a nominal figure. † Notional 1987 results with the new seat distribution.
Prime Minister before election Aníbal Cavaco Silva PSD Prime Minister after election Aníbal Cavaco Silva PSD

The 1991 Portuguese legislative election took place on 6 October. The election renewed all 230 members of the Assembly of the Republic. There was a reduction of 20 seats compared with previous elections, due to the 1989 Constitutional revision.^[4]

The Social Democratic Party, under the lead of Cavaco Silva, won a historic third term and won an absolute majority for the second consecutive election. While it lost 13 MPs due to the reduction of the overall number from the original 250 to 230, although just a 3 seat loss if the 1987 election results are tabulated with the new seat distribution, it gained a higher share of the vote than in 1987. Cavaco Silva became the first Prime Minister since Hintze Ribeiro, in 1904, to lead a party into three successive democratic election victories.

The Socialist Party, at the time led by Jorge Sampaio, the future President of Portugal, increased its share by 7% and gained 12 MPs, a gain of 16 if compared with 1987 with the new seat distribution, but did not manage to avoid the absolute majority of the Social Democrats. Like four and six years earlier, and like 1979 and 1980, the PS failed to win a single district. In the first legislative election after the fall of the Eastern Bloc, the communist dominated Democratic Unity Coalition lost much of its electoral influence, losing almost 10 MPs and 4% of the voting, but were able to hold on to the district of Beja by a slight margin over the PSD.

On the right, the CDS could not recover its past influence, mainly to the effect of tactical voting for the Social Democratic Party by right-wing voters, increasing its parliamentary group by only 1 MP. The National Solidarity Party, using a populist campaign, achieved for the first time an MP, in what would be the only presence of such party in the Parliament.

Voter turnout fell to 67.8%, and for the first time below 70% of the electorate.

Background

Leadership changes and challenges

CDS 1988 leadership election

After CDS's poor results, just 4%, in the 1987 general elections, then CDS leader Adriano Moreira announced he would leave the leadership and called a party congress to elect a new leader.^[5] Diogo Freitas do Amaral, former party leader and defeated candidate in the 1986 presidential election, returned to the party and was the sole candidate to the party's leadership.^[6]

PS 1989 leadership election

In the 1987 general election the PS polled 2nd with just 22%, while the PSD won a historic absolute majority. Then party leader, Vítor Constâncio was facing pressures because of his strategy, with interferences also from President Mário Soares, and, adding to this, his difficulty in finding a strong candidate for Lisbon to contest the 1989 local elections.^[7] Because of these pressures, Constâncio resign in late 1988 and a party congress to elect a new leader was called for mid January 1989. Two candidates were on the ballot, Jorge Sampaio and Jaime Gama.^[8] Sampaio was easily elected as PS leader.^[9]

PRD 1991 leadership election

The Democratic Renewal Party's results in the 1987 election were disappointing and António Ramalho Eanes resigned from the leadership.^[10] Hermínio Martinho returned to the leadership, but the party was plagued by deep divisions on its ideology and strategy, with key members, including Ramalho Eanes, announcing their departure from the party^[11] In June 1991, the party held a leadership ballot between Hermínio Martinho and Pedro Canavarro. Martinho defended the dissolution of the party, while Canavarro proposed the continuation of the party. The ballot results gave Canavarro a landslide victory.^[12] The results were the following:

Electoral system

The Assembly of the Republic has 230 members elected to four-year terms. The total number of MPs was reduced in 1989, during the Constitutional amendments, to 230 from the previous 250. 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 (absolute majority) for both the Government's Programme to be rejected or for a motion of no confidence to be approved.^[13]

The number of seats assigned to each district depends on the district magnitude.^[14] 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.^[15]

For these elections, and compared with the 1987 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following:^[16]

District	Number of MPs	Map
Lisbon(–6)	50	16 6 37 6 4 14 9 4 10 5 10 10 50 3 4 16 4 8 5 5 2 2
Porto(–2)	37
Braga(–1) and Setúbal(–1)	16
Aveiro(–1)	14
Leiria(–1), Santarém(–2) and Coimbra(–1)	10
Viseu(–1)	9
Faro(–1)	8
Vila Real and Viana do Castelo	6
Azores, Castelo Branco, Madeira	5
Beja(–1), Bragança, Évora and Guarda(–1)	4
Portalegre	3
Europe and Outside Europe	2

Parties

The table below lists the parties represented in the Assembly of the Republic during the 5th legislature (1987–1991) and that also partook in the election:

With the 1987 seat distribution

1987 results with the new seat distribution

Campaign period

Party slogans

Candidates' debates

No debates between the main parties were held as the PSD leader and Prime Minister, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, refused to take part in any debate.^[23]

Opinion polling

The following table shows the opinion polls of voting intention of the Portuguese voters before the election. Those parties that are listed were represented in parliament (1987-1991). Included is also the result of the Portuguese general elections in 1987 and 1991 for reference.

Note, until 2000, the publication of opinion polls in the last week of the campaign was forbidden.

  Exit poll

Date Released	Polling Firm		PS					Others	Lead
6 Oct 1991	Leg. Election	50.6 135	29.1 72	8.8 17	4.4 5	1.7 1	1.1 0	4.3 0	21.5
6 Oct 1991	RTP1 - Universidade Católica Seat projection	48.0–51.9 128/138	28.5–31.5 73/83	7.5–10.0 11/14	4.5–5.5 4/7	? 1/2	? 0/1	—	19.5–20.4
6 Oct 1991	TSF/Expresso - Euroexpansão	45.8–50.2	29.8–33.9	6.8–9.1	3.7–5.5	1.0–2.0	1.4–2.6	—	16.0–16.3
6 Oct 1991	Antena1 - Euroteste	47.0–50.0	31.0–34.0	7.5–10.0	4.0–5.0	–	1.0–1.5	—	16.0
6 Oct 1991	Rádio Comercial - GEOIDEIA	49.0–52.0	29.0–31.0	7.0–9.0	3.0–4.0	2.0–3.0	1.0–2.0	—	20.0–21.0
6 Oct 1991	Rádio Press	45.5	35.0	9.6	4.5	–	–	—	10.5
6 Oct 1991	Rádio Correio da Manhã	45.8–50.2	29.8–33.9	6.8–9.1	3.7–5.5	1.0–2.0	1.4–2.6	—	16.0–16.3
29 Sep 1991	Universidade Católica[b] Seat projection	51.3 134	29.3 73	7.5 12	5.0 5	7.0 2			22.0
28 Sep 1991	Euroteste	47.3	35.5	8.5	4.1	4.6			11.8
28 Sep 1991	Euroteste	46.0	37.0	9.7	3.9	3.4			9.0
28 Sep 1991	Euroexpansão	44.0	33.0	9.0	6.0	8.0			11.0
27 Sep 1991	Marktest	43.1	32.8	7.7	4.6	11.8			10.3
27 Sep 1991	Pluriteste	41.2	34.7	8.4	8.1	7.6			6.5
20 Sep 1991	Euroteste	45.6	35.5	10.0	4.4	4.5			10.1
20 Sep 1991	Marktest	41.9	31.9	7.3	4.4	14.5			10.0
16 Sep 1991	Pluriteste	39.2	26.6	6.2	6.0	22.0			12.6
16 Sep 1991	Euroteste	45.1	34.5	10.2	5.2	5.0			10.6
14 Sep 1991	Norma	45.0	37.5	11.2	3.5	2.8			7.5
28 Aug 1991	Euroexpansão/Marktest	35.3	36.8	8.7	4.9	14.3			1.5
4 Aug 1991	Euroteste/JN	47.5	37.8	12.3	8.2	—			7.7
19 Jul 1991	Norma	43.7	32.9	12.4	6.5	4.5			10.8
19 Jul 1991	Euroteste	45.4	36.6	10.8	4.0	3.2			8.8
13 Jan 1991	Euroteste[c]	47.5	36.9	9.3	3.5	2.7			10.6
17 Dec 1989	Local Elections	35.4	36.8	13.3	9.2	—	—	5.4	1.4
18 Jun 1989	EP Elections	32.8	28.5	14.4	14.2	—	0.8	9.3	4.3
19 Jul 1987	Leg. Election	50.2 148	22.2 60	12.1 31	4.4 4	Did not exist	0.6 0	10.5 7	28.0

National summary of votes and seats

Summary of the 6 October 1991 Assembly of the Republic elections results

Parties		Votes	%	±	MPs					MPs %/ votes %
					1987	1991	±	%	±
	Social Democratic	2,902,351	50.60	0.4	148	135	13	58.70	0.5	1.16
	Socialist	1,670,758	29.13	6.9	60	72	12	31.30	7.3	1.07
	Democratic Unity Coalition[d]	504,583	8.80	3.3	31	17	14	7.39	5.0	0.84
	Democratic and Social Centre	254,317	4.43	0.0	4	5	1	2.17	0.6	0.49
	National Solidarity	96,096	1.68	—	—	1	—	0.44	—	0.39
	Revolutionary Socialist	64,159	1.12	0.5	0	0	0	0.00	0.0	0.0
	Portuguese Workers' Communist	48,542	0.85	0.5	0	0	0	0.00	0.0	0.0
	Democratic Renewal	35,077	0.61	4.3	7	0	7	0.00	2.8	0.0
	People's Monarchist	25,216	0.44	0.0	0	0	0	0.00	0.0	0.0
	Democratic Party of the Atlantic	10,842	0.19	—	—	0	—	0.00	—	0.0
	Left Revolutionary Front	6,661	0.12	—	—	0	—	0.00	—	0.0
	People's Democratic Union[e]	6,157	0.11	0.8	0	0	0	0.00	0.0	0.0
Total valid		5,624,759	98.07	0.3	250	230	20	100.00	0.0	—
Blank ballots		47,652	0.83	0.1
Invalid ballots		63,020	1.10	0.2
Total		5,735,431	100.00
Registered voters/turnout		8,462,357	67.78	3.8
Source: Comissão Nacional de Eleições

Distribution by constituency

Maps

• 
  Most voted political force by municipality.