1991 Portuguese legislative election


The Portuguese legislative election of 1991 took place on 6 October. The Social Democratic Party, under the lead of Cavaco Silva, won a historic third term and won with an absolute majority for the second consecutive turn, achieving a higher share than in the previous election, losing, however, 13 MPs due to the reduction of the overall number from the original 250 to 230. 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, but did not manage to avoid the absolute majority of the Social Democrats. 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 14 MPs and 4% of the voting.
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.

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 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 for the third consecutive time.

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 1987 and 1991 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|1987
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align=center|1991
! 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 | CDS
!colspan=2 | PSN

Maps