1987 Portuguese legislative election


The Portuguese legislative election of 1987 took place on 19 July. In the previous election, in 1985, the Social Democratic Party had won a minority government managing to survive in coalition with the Democratic and Social Center and the Democratic Renewal Party, and after the approval of a no-confidence motion from the left-wing parties, with the aid of the Democratic Renewal Party, the government fell and Mário Soares, the President at the time, called for a new election.
The PSD was elected to a landslide majority government—the biggest that a Portuguese party had ever won in a free election. Although the PSD was very popular going into the election, the size of its victory far exceeded the party's most optimistic expectations. The left-wing Democratic Unity Coalition lost some of its MPs to the Socialist Party and the Democratic Renovator Party lost almost all of its influence, mainly due to its responsibility in the fall of the former government. The right-wing Democratic and Social Center lost almost half of its vote share, due to the effect of tactical voting for the also right-wing, Social Democratic Party.
European elections were held on the same day.

Electoral system

The Assembly of the Republic has 250 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 126 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 and the respective leaders:
Aníbal Cavaco Silva, leader of the Social Democratic Party, was nominated Prime Minister.

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.

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 1985 and 1987 for reference.

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|1985
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align=center|1987
! 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!!%!!S
!rowspan=2|Total
S
!colspan=2 | PSD
!colspan=2 | PS
!colspan=2 | CDU
!colspan=2 | PRD
!colspan=2 | CDS

Maps