Turnout: 55.86%
About this election
The Portuguese legislative election of 4 October 2015 was held as the country emerged from the severe austerity of its 2011–14 bailout by the "Troika" of the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF. The centre-right "Portugal Ahead" coalition (Portugal à Frente, PàF) — uniting the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the conservative CDS–People's Party under Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho — won the most votes and seats, but lost its absolute majority. Within weeks that pyrrhic victory unravelled into one of the most consequential governing arrangements in modern Portuguese history.
Portugal is a semi-presidential republic. Voters elect the 230-member Assembly of the Republic (Assembleia da República) for four-year terms by proportional representation, using the D'Hondt method across 22 multi-member constituencies — the 18 mainland districts plus the autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira and two constituencies for citizens abroad. There is no national threshold, but D'Hondt and the small size of many districts favour larger parties. The Assembly's composition determines who can form a government; the directly elected President, a separate office, appoints the prime minister and can dissolve parliament but does not run the executive. This division of powers would prove decisive in 2015.
Passos Coelho's government had implemented deep spending cuts, tax rises and public-sector wage freezes to meet bailout targets, and campaigned on the message that recovery was fragile and must not be jeopardised. The opposition Socialist Party (PS), led by the former Lisbon mayor António Costa, attacked the human cost of austerity. To Costa's left, the Left Bloc (BE) and the Communist-Green Unitary Democratic Coalition (CDU) hoped to capitalise on anti-austerity anger. The campaign was dominated by the economy, emigration of the young, and the credibility of competing recovery plans.
Portugal Ahead won 38.56% and 107 seats, well short of the 116 needed for a majority and down sharply from the combined PSD–CDS tally of 2011. The PS took 32.32% and 86 seats, the Left Bloc surged to 10.19% and 19 seats — its best result to date — and the CDU held 8.24% and 17 seats. The animal-rights party PAN entered parliament with a single seat. Geographically the centre-right led across most of the north, the interior and the islands, while the PS won the southern, more left-leaning districts of the Alentejo (Beja, Évora, Portalegre), the Algarve (Faro) and Setúbal, plus the Azores.
President Aníbal Cavaco Silva first invited Passos Coelho to form a minority government, which took office but was defeated in a confidence vote within days. The three left-wing parties — PS, BE and CDU — then agreed an unprecedented parliamentary accord nicknamed the geringonça ("contraption"). António Costa became prime minister of a Socialist minority government supported from outside by the radical left, an arrangement many predicted would quickly collapse but which instead governed for a full term, rolled back some austerity measures while keeping deficits under control, and reshaped Portuguese politics for the rest of the decade.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.