2005 Portuguese legislative election

← 2002 20 February 2005 2009 →
230 seats to the Portuguese Assembly 116 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Registered	8,944,508 0.5%
Turnout	5,747,834 (64.3%) 2.8 pp
First party Second party Third party   Leader José Sócrates Pedro Santana Lopes Jerónimo de Sousa Party PS PSD PCP Alliance CDU Leader since 24 September 2004 1 July 2004 27 November 2004 Leader's seat Castelo Branco[2] Lisbon[3] Lisbon[1] Last election 96 seats, 37.8% 105 seats, 40.2% 12 seats, 6.9% Seats won 121 75 14 Seat change 25 30 2 Popular vote 2,588,312 1,653,425 433,369 Percentage 45.0% 28.8% 7.5% Swing 7.2 pp 11.4 pp 0.6 pp   Fourth party Fifth party   Leader Paulo Portas Francisco Louçã Party CDS–PP BE Leader since 22 March 1998 24 March 1999 Leader's seat Aveiro[4] Lisbon[5] Last election 14 seats, 8.7% 3 seats, 2.7% Seats won 12 8 Seat change 2 5 Popular vote 416,415 364,971 Percentage 7.2% 6.4% Swing 1.5 pp 3.6 pp
Vote winner strength by district Results by constituency
Prime Minister before election Pedro Santana Lopes PSD Prime Minister after election José Sócrates PS

The 2005 Portuguese legislative election took place on 20 February. The election renewed all 230 members of the Assembly of the Republic.

These elections were called after the decision of President Jorge Sampaio on 30 November 2004 to dissolve the Parliament as an answer to the political instability caused by the government led by Pedro Santana Lopes (PSD) in coalition with the PP. Santana Lopes had become Prime Minister in July 2004, after José Manuel Durão Barroso left the country in order to become President of the European Commission in a decision that divided the country, because many Portuguese were expecting that the Socialist President Jorge Sampaio would dissolve the Parliament and call a legislative election. However, after five unstable months, President Sampaio decided to dissolve Parliament and call fresh elections. The Prime Minister nevertheless announced the resignation of the government on 11 December, in an action with no practical effects whatsoever.

The campaign started officially on 6 February and the major topics were the problematic state of the country's finances, unemployment, abortion and even José Sócrates's alleged homosexuality.^[6][7]

Headed by Sócrates, the centre-left Socialist Party (PS) won the election with a landslide victory, winning in 19 of the 22 electoral constituencies, including in districts such as Viseu and Bragança that historically voted for the right. The Socialist Party conquered its first absolute majority, receiving 45% of the electorate vote and 52% of the seats in the Parliament, making this the Socialists' largest ever victory in terms of vote percentage and seat count as of 2022. The centre-right parties, mainly the Social Democrats, were punished for their performance in government, and lost more than 11% of votes they had garnered in the previous election. On the left, the Left Bloc achieved its best result ever and made the biggest climb, gaining 5 MPs, while the CDU (Communists and the Greens) gained 2 MPs and reversed their downward trend of the last elections.

Voter turnout was the highest since 1995, as 64.3% of the electorate cast a ballot.

Background

Fall of the government

Deep disagreements and disputes within the Social Democratic Party began to derail the government led by Pedro Santana Lopes.^[8] One of those disputes, the resignation of Youth and Sports Minister, Henrique Chaves, which was a close ally of Santana, precipitated the fall of the government, as Chaves accused Santana of not being "loyal and truthful".^[9] Following this, President Jorge Sampaio had "enough" of crisis and accused the government of "contradictions and lack of coordination that contributed to its discredit".^[10] Therefore, Sampaio used his power of dissolution of Parliament and called a snap election, the only time till date such power was used in Portuguese democracy.^[11][12] A new election was called, by the President, for February 2005.^[13]

Leadership changes and challenges

PSD 2004 leadership election

Following the resignation of José Manuel Durão Barroso as Prime Minister and PSD leader to become President of the European Commission, the Social Democratic Party (PSD) initiated the process to elect a new leader.^[14] Pedro Santana Lopes, by then Mayor of Lisbon, was the sole candidate for the leadership^[15] and his name was overwhelmingly confirmed in a National Party Council meeting on 1 July 2004.^[16] The results were the following:

Two weeks later, on 17 July 2004, Santana Lopes was sworn in as Prime Minister.^[17]

PS 2004 leadership election

On early July 2004, PS leader Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues resigned from the leadership against President Jorge Sampaio decision to nominate Pedro Santana Lopes as Prime Minister, following the resignation of Durão Barroso, rather than calling a snap legislative election.^[18] New elections to select a new leader were called for 25 and 26 September 2004. Former environment minister José Sócrates, Manuel Alegre and the son of former President Mário Soares, João Soares, contested the leadership ballot.^[19] José Sócrates was elected by a landslide^[20] and the results were the following:

PCP 2004 leadership election

In the fall of 2004, PCP leader Carlos Carvalhas decided to step down from the party's leadership after 12 years in the post.^[21] Jerónimo de Sousa was selected as candidate for the leadership and was elected in the party's congress during the weekend of 27 and 28 November 2004.^[22] The results were the following:

Electoral system

The Assembly of the Republic has 230 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 116 (absolute majority) for both the Government's Programme to be rejected or for a motion of no confidence to be approved.^[23]

The number of seats assigned to each district depends on the district magnitude.^[24] 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.^[25]

For these elections, and compared with the 2002 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following:^[26]

District	Number of MPs	Map
Lisbon	48	18 6 38 5 4 15 9 4 10 5 10 10 48 2 3 17 3 8 6 5 2 2
Porto	38
Braga	18
Setúbal	17
Aveiro	15
Leiria, Santarém and Coimbra	10
Viseu	9
Faro	8
Madeira(+1) and Viana do Castelo	6
Azores, Castelo Branco and Vila Real	5
Bragança and Guarda	4
Beja and Évora	3
Portalegre(–1), Europe and Outside Europe	2

Parties

The table below lists the parties represented in the Assembly of the Republic during the 9th legislature (2002–2005) and that also partook in the election:

Campaign period

Party slogans

Candidates' debates

Opinion polling

Voter turnout

The table below shows voter turnout throughout election day including voters from Overseas.

Turnout	Time
	12:00			16:00			19:00
	2002	2005	±	2002	2005	±	2002	2005	±
Total	18.00%	21.93%	3.93 pp	45.88%	50.94%	5.06 pp	61.48%	64.26%	2.78 pp
Sources[36][37][38][39]

National summary of votes and seats

Summary of the 20 February 2005 Assembly of the Republic elections results

Parties		Votes	%	±	MPs					MPs %/ votes %
					2002	2005	±	%	±
	Socialist	2,588,312	45.03	7.2	96	121	25	52.61	10.9	1.17
	Social Democratic[b]	1,653,425	28.77	11.4	105	75	30	32.61	13.0	1.13
	Unitary Democratic Coalition[c]	433,369	7.54	0.6	12	14	2	6.09	0.9	0.81
	People's	416,415	7.25	1.5	14	12	2	5.22	0.9	0.72
	Left Bloc	364,971	6.35	3.6	3	8	5	3.48	2.2	0.55
	Portuguese Workers' Communist	48,186	0.84	0.2	0	0	0	0.00	0.0	0.0
	New Democracy	40,358	0.70	—	—	0	—	0.00	—	0.0
	Humanist	17,056	0.30	0.1	0	0	0	0.00	0.0	0.0
	National Renovator	9,374	0.16	0.1	0	0	0	0.00	0.0	0.0
	Workers Party of Socialist Unity	5,535	0.10	0.0	0	0	0	0.00	0.0	0.0
	Democratic Party of the Atlantic	1,618	0.03	—	—	0	—	0.00	—	0.0
Total valid		5,578,782	97.06	1.0	230	230	0	100.00	0.0	—
Blank ballots		103,537	1.80	0.8
Invalid ballots		65,515	1.14	0.2
Total		5,747,834	100.00
Registered voters/turnout		8,944,508	64.26	2.8
Source: Comissão Nacional de Eleições

Distribution by constituency

Maps

• 
  Strongest party by district.
• 
  Most voted political force by municipality.
• 
  Share of vote for CDU by district.

Graphics

• 
  Seats won by party.
• 
  Gains and losses by party.
• 
  Share of vote by party.