1976 Portuguese legislative election


The Portuguese legislative election of 1976 took place on 25 April, exactly one year after the previous election, and two years after the Carnation Revolution. With a new Constitution approved, the country's main aim was economic recovery and strengthening its democratic institutions.
The Socialist Party won a plurality of legislative seats, and its leader Mário Soares became the Prime Minister of the 1st Constitutional government on 23 July 1976. The lack of a socialist majority forced his party to form an unexpected coalition with the Democratic and Social Center, a right-wing party. The nature of this coalition, between a socialist party and a conservative party that voted against the new constitution because of its socialist influences, surprised most Portuguese voters and marked the start of the Socialist Party's right-wing turn that would soon be attacked by all the left due to the new government's measures against left-wing reforms following the Carnation Revolution, mainly concerning agrarian reform, in what was called the PS' putting "Socialism in the drawer".
The Social Democratic Party won the second most seats and the Portuguese Communist Party achieved considerable gains that reflected its growing influence, mainly in the south of the country.

Electoral system

The Assembly of the Republic has 263 members elected to four-year terms. The total number of MPs increased to 263 from the 1975 total of 250 MPs. 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 132 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:

Party slogans

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"|Seats
! rowspan="2" style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" |MPs %/
votes %
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align=center|1975
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align=center|1976
! 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 | PS
!colspan=2 | PPD
!colspan=2 | CDS
!colspan=2 | PCP
!colspan=2 | UDP

Maps