2015 Portuguese legislative election

After the PSD/CDS–PP government was sworn in, a series of austerity policies, following the bailout deal, were enacted and created several backlash and protests.[5] In September 2012, further austerity policies led to one of the biggest demonstrations against a government in Portuguese democracy, with more than 1 million people going out to the streets across the country.[6] Because of this massive protest, the coalition government was deeply shaken and was forced to drop several policies.[7]

In the summer of 2013, another crisis in the coalition government emerged. The Finance Minister Vítor Gaspar resigned in late June 2013,[8] and Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho choose the Treasury Secretary, Maria Luís Albuquerque, to be the next Finance minister.[9] However, CDS – People's Party (CDS-PP) leader, Paulo Portas, criticized the choice of the new minister and announced his "irrevocable" resignation from the government.[10] Prime Minister Passos Coelho didn't accepted Portas's resignation and refused also to leave his office, opting, instead, to negotiate a new government organization with Portas.[11] A deal was reached a few days later, in which Portas would become Deputy Prime Minister and with more powers on economic affairs.[12] But, President Aníbal Cavaco Silva refused to accept the deal and forced negotiations between PSD and PS, in which a deal between parties to maintain economic stability and snap elections in 2014 were on the table.[13] Despite the Presidential preassures, talks between PSD and PS fell apart and Cavaco Silva was forced to accept the PSD/CDS–PP original deal.[14]

The Social Democrats (PSD) suffered a considerable setback in the 2013 local elections by gathering just 31% of the votes and 106 mayors, a drop of 33 cities, while the Socialists (PS) obtained their best result till that date, 150 mayors, a gain of 18, and won almost 37% of the votes.[15] In May 2014, Portugal was successful in exiting the economic bailout that was negotiated in 2011.[16]

After José Sócrates resignation from the party's leadership, due to the poor result of the Socialists in the 2011 elections,[17] a snap leadership election was called to elect a new leader for 22 and 23 July 2011.[18] There were two candidates on the ballot: António José Seguro and Francisco Assis.[19] Seguro was elected by a landslide and the results were the following:

The 2014 Portuguese Socialist Party prime ministerial primary was held on 28 September 2014. Following the party's disappointing result in the 2014 European elections, in which the PS got just 31% of the votes against the 28% of the PSD/CDS coalition, then Mayor of Lisbon António Costa called the results "tiny" (poucochinho), and challenged António José Seguro for the leadership.[20] It was the first open primary in the history of the party, and of Portugal, and elected the party's candidate for Prime Minister for the 2015 general election. In end, only two candidates ran: António José Seguro, General Secretary of the party at the time of the primary, and António Costa, mayor of Lisbon. António Costa won the primary by a landslide with 67.9% of the vote against the 31.7% of Antonio José Seguro, resulting in Seguro conceding defeat and resigning as General Secretary of the party. Thereafter, Costa was elected as the new Socialist General Secretary on 22 November 2014.[21] The results were the following:

One year after the disappointing results of the party in the 2011 elections, the then Left Bloc leader, Francisco Louçã, decided to leave the leadership[22] and a party convention was held to elect a new leader. In November 2012, the party elected a dual leadership headed by João Semedo and Catarina Martins.[23]

However, bad polling and election results, specially the 2014 European elections results, put pressure in the party's leadership,[24] and a new party convention, in 2014, showed a very divided party as the dual leadership of Semedo and Martins was reelected by a very slim margin. The results were the following:

Just 7 days after the very close result in the party's convention, on 30 November 2014, João Semedo resigned as party coordinator and Catarina Martins became to sole party coordinator.[25]

Official logo of the election.

According to the Portuguese Constitution, an election must be called between 14 September and 14 October of the year that the legislature ends. The election is called by the President of Portugal but is not called at the request of the Prime Minister, however the President must listen all the parties represented in Parliament and the election day must be announced at least 60 days before the election.[26] If an election is called in the middle of the legislature (Dissolution of Parliament) it must be held at least in 55 days. Election day is the same in all multi-seats constituencies, and should fall on a Sunday or national holiday. The next legislative election must, therefore, took place no later than 11 October 2015.[27] After meeting with all of the parties represented in parliament on 21 July 2015, the President Aníbal Cavaco Silva called the election for 4 October.[1]

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 (absolute majority) for both the Government's Programme to be rejected or for a motion of no confidence to be approved.[28]

The number of seats assigned to each district depends on the district magnitude.[29] 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.[30]

For these elections, and compared with the 2011 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following:[31]

District	Number of MPs	Map
Lisbon	47	19 6 39 5 3 16 9 4 9 4 10 9 47 2 3 18 3 9 6 5 2 2
Porto	39
Braga	19
Setúbal(+1)	18
Aveiro	16
Leiria	10
Coimbra, Faro, Viseu and Santarém(–1)	9
Madeira and Viana do Castelo	6
Azores and Vila Real	5
Castelo Branco and Guarda	4
Beja, Bragança, Évora	3
Portalegre, Europe and Outside Europe	2

The table below lists the parties represented in the Assembly of the Republic during the 12th legislature (2011–2015):

The parties and coalitions that contested seats to the Portuguese parliament, and their leaders, were:

After changes in the electoral law that obligated that all of the parties contesting an election should be represented in debates, the 3 main TV networks RTP, SIC and TVI proposed 3 debates between the two main candidates António Costa and Pedro Passos Coelho and also a series of head-to-head debates between various party leaders and one debate with all party leaders.[38] After meetings with the various parties, it was decided to hold two face-to-face debates between António Costa and Pedro Passos Coelho in which one would be broadcast on television and the other on radio. There was also going to be a debate between all the parties represented in Parliament but it was cancelled by the refusal of the PSD/CDS-PP coalition to have only the leader of the PSD on the debate and not also the leader of the CDS-PP, Paulo Portas[39][40]

Completed televised debates:

Portuguese legislative election debates, 2015
N°.	Date	Broadcaster	Moderator(s)	Invitees				Notes
Name  Invited Participant.    N  Non-invitee.
1	1 September	RTP Informação	Vítor Gonçalves	N	N	Jerónimo	Martins
2	8 September	SIC Notícias	Ana Lourenço	Portas	N	N	Martins
3	9 September	RTP1 SIC TVI	Judite de Sousa Clara de Sousa João Adelino Faria	P. Coelho	Costa	N	N	Broadcast simultaneously on the 3 major TV networks.
4	11 September	RTP Informação	Vítor Gonçalves	P. Coelho	N	N	Martins
5	14 September	TVI24	Pedro Pinto	N	Costa	N	Martins
6	16 September	SIC Notícias	Ana Lourenço	N	Costa	Jerónimo	N
7	17 September	Antena 1 RR TSF	Graça Franco Maria Flor Pedroso Paulo Baldaia	P. Coelho	Costa	N	N	Broadcast simultaneously on 3 national radio stations.
8	18 September	TVI24	José Alberto Carvalho	Portas	N	Apolónia	N
Candidate viewed as "most convincing" in each debate
Debate			Poll source					Notes
3	9 September	RTP1/SIC/TVI	Aximage	35.7	48.0			16.3% said it was a tie.
			Eurosondagem	31.8	40.0			28.2% said neither won or it was a tie.
7	17 September	Antena 1/RR/TSF	Marktest	42.5	29.5			14.2% said neither won and 13.8% were undecided.

• 
  Most voted political force by district or autonomous region.
• 
  Most voted political force by municipality.
• 
  Percentage of votes for the left-wing parties represented in the Parliament, by district or autonomous region.
• 
  Most voted-for political fields by district/autonomous regions: Left: PS, BE, CDU; Right: PàF.

The Socialists, the Left Bloc, the Communists and the Greens started negotiations to form a left-wing majority coalition government.[45][46] On 19 October 2015, the Secretary-General of the Socialist Party, António Costa, rejected the proposal for a post-election coalition government with the right-wing alliance PàF.[47] On the next day, Costa said that the Socialist Party would reject in the parliament any government that would be led by Pedro Passos Coelho and supported by the right-wing coalition Portugal Ahead. During the same day, António Costa guaranteed to President Aníbal Cavaco Silva that the Socialist Party had the conditions to form a government, supported in the parliament by the Left Bloc and the Communist Party.[48] After being consulted by the President, the Socialist Party, the Left Bloc, the Communist Party and the Greens expressed their intention to support a government of the Socialist Party, led by António Costa.

Among the most likely scenarios that were considered for a new government were:[49][50]

• A right-wing (PàF) minority government without the support of the Socialists (without majority support from the new parliament; rejected by Costa);
• A right-wing (PàF) minority government with the parliamentary support of the Socialists (rejected by Costa);
• A grand coalition government including the right-wing coalition (PàF) and the Socialists (rejected by Costa);
• A minority government of the Socialist Party with the parliamentary support of the Left Bloc and the Communists (most likely);
• A left-wing coalition government including the Socialists, the Left Bloc and the Communists;
• A caretaker government, until new elections are held, if the parties fail to reach an agreement.

On 22 October, President Aníbal Cavaco Silva controversially designated Pedro Passos Coelho to form a new government,[51] which after taking the oath of office had 10 days to submit its programme in Parliament. But the PS, BE and CDU had already stated that they would call a motion of rejection to bring down the government.[52]

On 23 October, the new Assembly of the Republic was opened. Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, a Socialist, was elected as President of the Assembly with the support of the Socialists, the Communists, the Left Bloc and the Greens. He received 120 votes against 108 votes for the government's candidate.[53]

The members of the second Passos Coelho government took the oath of office on 30 October.[54][55] The government programme was to be voted in the Parliament on 10 November.[56]

The Socialist Party reached agreements with the three other left-wing parties: the Left Bloc, the Communists and the Greens. Those agreements were eventually approved by the national organs of the Socialist Party on 8 November.[57][58] On 10 November, the Portugal Ahead government programme was rejected in a motion of rejection by a vote of 123 to 107 MPs.[59]

Motion of Rejection Pedro Passos Coelho (PSD)
Ballot →		10 November 2015
Required majority →		116 out of 230 Y
	No • PSD (89) • CDS–PP (18)	107 / 230
	Yes • PS (86) • BE (19) • PCP (15) • PEV (2) • PAN (1)	123 / 230
	Abstentions	0 / 230
	Absentees	0 / 230
Sources[60]

On 26 November, a new government was established as a Socialist Party minority government led by António Costa, Socialist Party leader, with the confidence and supply of the Left Bloc, the Communist Party and the Green Party.[61]