Unitary Democratic Coalition


The Unitary Democratic Coalition is an electoral and political coalition between the Portuguese Communist Party and the Ecologist Party "The Greens". The coalition also integrates the political movement Democratic Intervention.
The coalition was formed for the first time in 1987 in order to run to the simultaneous legislative election and European Parliament election that were held on July 19 of that year.
Since the beginning of the coalition, the member parties have never participated separately in any election. The Communist Party is the major force inside it and has the majority of places in the electoral lists, however, the Greens also have an important presence and elected 2 members of parliament among the 17 elected by the coalition in the last legislative election. Each party has its own parliamentary group and counts as a separate party in official issues.
At a local level, the coalition usually presents lists in almost every municipality and both Communists and Greens may occupy first place on the lists. As the Greens have a smaller structure, the offices of the Communist Party are used as offices of the coalition.
The coalition supported the minority Socialist Costa Government with a confidence and supply agreement.

Symbol

The present symbol of CDU shows the PCP's symbol and the PEV's symbol, a hammer and sickle and a sunflower, respectively, with the respective names below. That symbol replaced a former one that featured three hexagons with the inscription: CDU and was often used with a beehive. That was sometimes said to mean that CDU worked just like a bee and the hexagons were meant to represent the cell-based Leninist organization of the PCP.

Youth organization

The coalition has a youth wing, called Juventude CDU, that develops political work in youth related subjects, along with youth-oriented activities, mainly during the electoral campaigns. The Juventude CDU is mainly composed by members of the youth wings of the parties that compose the CDU, the Portuguese Communist Youth and the Ecolojovem.

Electoral results achieved by CDU

Assembly of the Republic

Election year# of overall
votes		% of overall
vote		# of overall
seats won		+/-Notes
1987685,10912.2
1991501,8408.8 14
1995504,0078.6 2
1999483,7169.0 2
2002379,8706.9 5
2005433,3697.5 2
2009446,1747.9 1
2011440,8507.9 1
2015445,9018.3 1
2019332,0186.3 5


Note:

European Parliament