1995 Portuguese legislative election


The Portuguese legislative election of 1995 took place on 1 October. The Socialist Party defeated the Social Democratic Party under the lead of António Guterres, elected three years before, but missed the absolute majority by 4 MPs.
The Social Democratic party, under the lead of Fernando Nogueira, was weakened by the end of the 10-year cycle of governments led by Cavaco Silva. The two minor parties, the People's Party and the Democratic Unity Coalition achieved only 15 MPs each, a thing that marked the growing bi-polarization of the Portuguese political map. Although turnout, in percentage point, was lower than the previous election in 1991, almost 6 million voters cast a ballot on election day, the highest figure since 1980.
Voter turnout stood at 66.3%, the lowest until then.

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 for both the Government's Programme to be rejected or for a motion of no confidence to be approved.
The number of seats assigned to each district depends on the district magnitude. 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.

Parties

The major parties involved were listed with their leaders:
António Guterres, leader of the Socialist Party, was nominated Prime Minister for the first time, becoming the first socialist Prime Minister in 10 years.

Campaign period

Party slogans

Candidates' debates

The 1995 debates, between PSD leader Fernando Nogueira and PS leader António Guterres, were the first general election debates since the 1985 elections.

Opinion Polling

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 1991 and 1995 for reference.
Note, until 2000, the publication of opinion polls in the last week of the campaign was forbidden.

National summary of votes and seats

! rowspan="2" colspan=2 style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=left|Parties
! rowspan="2" style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|Votes
! rowspan="2" style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|%
! rowspan="2" style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|±
! colspan="5" style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align="center"|MPs
! rowspan="2" style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" |MPs %/
votes %
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align=center|1991
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align=center|1995
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|±
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|%
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|±

Distribution by constituency

!rowspan=2|Constituency!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S
!rowspan=2|Total
S
!colspan=2 | PS
!colspan=2 | PSD
!colspan=2 | CDS–PP
!colspan=2 | CDU

Maps