2014 European Parliament election in Portugal


The European Parliament election of 2014 in Portugal elected the Portuguese delegation to the European Parliament from 2014 to 2019. This was the seventh EP election held in Portugal. The elections were held on Sunday, 25 May 2014.
The Socialist Party was the winner of the elections, scoring 31.5% of the votes. The Socialists increased their share of vote by almost 5%, and won one more seat compared with 2009. However, the PS victory was much more weaker than what polls predicted, as the margin between them and the PSD/CDS coalition was below 4%. Because of this worse than expected result, the PS would enter in a leadership contest just weeks after the election.
The PSD/CDS contested the election in a coalition called "Portugal Alliance". The coalition achieved one of the worst results ever, as PSD+CDS never polled below 30%, but the weak result by the coalition was softened by the close margin between them and the Socialists.
The Democratic Unity Coalition scored their best result since 1989, polling almost 13% of the vote and winning one more seat compared with 2009. On the other hand, the Left Bloc suffered a huge defeat by erasing their 2009 historic results. The BE won 4.6% of the votes, a drop of more than 6%, and was only able to elect their top candidate Marisa Matias, compared with the 3 seats they won in 2009.
The big surprise of the elections was the extraordinary result of the Earth Party. Headed by the former bar association chairman António Marinho e Pinto, MPT won 7.2% of the votes and was able to elect 2 members to the European Parliament. To add also, that LIVRE, headed by BE dissident Rui Tavares, wasn't able to win a seat, although scoring 2.2%.
Turnout fell to the lowest level ever, with only 33.7% of voters casting a ballot.

Electoral System

The voting method used, for the election of European members of parliament, is by proportional representation using the d'Hondt method, which is known to benefit leading parties. In the 2014 EU elections, Portugal had 21 seats to be filled. Deputies are elected in a single constituency, corresponding to the entire national territory.

Parties and candidates

The major parties that participated in the election, and their EP list leaders, were:
The Social Democratic Party and the People's Party have contested this election in a coalition.

Opinion polling

National summary of votes and seats

!style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=left colspan=2|National party
!style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=left|European party
!style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=left|Main candidate
!style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|Votes
!style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|%
!style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|+/–
!style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|Seats
!style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|+/–
! 8
! 7
6
1
!3
3
0
! 2
! 1
! 0
! 0
! 0
! 0
! 0
! 0
! 0
! 0
! 0
! 0
! 0
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9"| 21

Distribution by European group