1983 Portuguese legislative election

← 1980 25 April 1983 1985 →
← outgoing members elected members →
All 250 seats in theAssembly of the Republic 126 seats needed for a majority
Registered	7,337,064 2.2%
Turnout	5,707,695 (77.8%) 6.1pp
First party Second party   Leader Mário Soares Carlos Mota Pinto Party PS PSD Leader since 19 April 1973 Presumptive Leader's seat Lisbon Coimbra Last election 66 seats, 27.8%[a] 82 seats (AD) Seats won 101 75 Seat change 35 7 Popular vote 2,061,309 1,554,804 Percentage 36.1% 27.2% Swing 8.3pp [b]   Third party Fourth party   Leader Álvaro Cunhal Francisco Lucas Pires Party PCP CDS Alliance APU Leader since 14 April 1978 20 February 1983 Leader's seat Lisbon Lisbon Last election 41 seats, 16.8% 46 seats (AD) Seats won 44 30 Seat change 3 16 Popular vote 1,031,609 716,705 Percentage 18.1% 12.6% Swing 1.3pp [b]
Vote winner strength by district Results by constituency
Prime Minister before election Francisco Pinto Balsemão PSD Prime Minister after election Mário Soares PS

The1983 Portuguese legislative election took place on 25 April. The election renewed all 250 members of theAssembly of the Republic.

The last election, in October 1980 had been won by a right-wing coalition, theDemocratic Alliance (AD) andFrancisco Sá Carneiro had retained office asPrime Minister with an increased majority.

However, Sá Carneiro, along with other important members of the coalition, died inan aircrash only two months after the election, on 4 December 1980. Such happenings caused a massive political instability andFrancisco Pinto Balsemão, a senior official of theSocial Democratic Party, the largest party in the Alliance, became Prime Minister. However, Balsemão's governments were very unstable and after the1982 local elections results, he resigned as Prime Minister. The Social Democratic Party proposed possible names for Prime Minister toPresident of PortugalAntónio Ramalho Eanes, but the President refused them and decided to call a snap election for April 1983.

The election was won by theSocialist Party with 36 percent, andMário Soares was nominated Prime Minister. However, the Socialists lacked a majority in theAssembly of the Republic and were forced to form a coalition with the Social Democrats, which achieved 27 percent, in what was called the "Central Bloc". Although this coalition allowed Soares to govern, several members of both parties were against it, and internal attacks led to the collapse of the coalition after less than two years. In the election that followed, the Communist-dominatedUnited People Alliance lost 3 MPs and theDemocratic and Social Center, after the dissolution of the Democratic Alliance, was now alone in the Parliament with 30 MPs, a loss of 16. The election marked the beginning of a process of bi-polarization of Portuguese politics.

This was the last legislative election to be won by the Socialist Party until1995.

In October 1980, the Democratic Alliance (AD), led byFrancisco Sá Carneiro, was reelected with a reinforced majority but it was cut short with the death of Sá Carneiro, his partner Snu Abecassis, his Defense ministerAdelino Amaro da Costa and his wife, plus other crew members, in a tragic plane crash inCamarate,Loures, shortly after taking off from the main runway ofLisbon Airport.^[1] This tragic air crash sparked a series of conspirancy theories, mainly because of Portugal's involvement in theIran–Iraq War and the supply of weapons to both Iraq and Iran.^[2]

Following the death of Sá Carneiro,Diogo Freitas do Amaral,CDS leader, became interim Prime Minister until the election of a new PSD leader. Days later,Francisco Pinto Balsemão was elected PSD leader and sworn in as Prime Minister.

Pinto Balsemão had a lot of problems in leading the government, as he lacked support from many senior members of his party, likeAníbal Cavaco Silva, former Finance minister under Sá Carneiro, and several of his cabinet ministers kept resigning. Moreover, the right-wing policies were criticized by the left-wing and by the trade unions, and in February 1982, theGeneral Confederation of the Portuguese Workers, with the support of the Communists, called for ageneral strike that shook the government. The wave of resignations among Balsemão's ministers continued and by the end of 1982, and also influenced by theAD's bad results in the1982 local elections, Balsemão himself also resigned.

The Social Democratic Party proposed, toPresidentRamalho Eanes, a government led byVítor Crespo, but President Eanes rejects the proposal citing that the political conditions were just too deteriorated, thus he decided to dissolve the Parliament and call an election for April.^[3] Shortly after, the AD was dissolved as PSD, CDS and PPM decided to contest by their own the April snap election.

On 13 December 1980, just a few days after Sá Carneiro's death, the PSD national party council electedFrancisco Pinto Balsemão as party leader and nominated him to becamePrime Minister.^[4] Balsemão was sworn in as Prime Minister on 9 January 1981.^[5]

After the dissolution of the Democratic Alliance (AD),Diogo Freitas do Amaral resigned from the party's leadership, and a new congress to elect a new leader was called.^[6] Two candidates were on the ballot,Francisco Lucas Pires andLuís Barbosa, with Lucas Pires being elected as new party leader.^[7]

Just like CDS, after the collapse of the AD coalition, the then PSD leaderFrancisco Pinto Balsemão announces he would not run for the leadership of the party.^[8] Shortly after,Carlos Mota Pinto is selected by the PSD as the party's candidate for Prime Minister.^[9]

TheAssembly of the Republic has 250 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 126 (absolute majority) for both the Government's Programme to be rejected or for amotion of no confidence to be approved.^[10]

The number of seats assigned to each district depends on thedistrict magnitude.^[11] The use of thed'Hondt method makes for a higher effective threshold than certain other allocation methods such as theHare quota orSainte-Laguë method, which are more generous to small parties.^[12]

For these elections, and compared with the 1980 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following:^[13]

District	Number of MPs	Map
Lisbon	56	16 6 38 6 4 15 10 5 11 6 11 12 56 4 5 17 5 9 5 5 2 2
Porto	38
Setúbal	17
Braga(+1)	16
Aveiro	15
Santarém	12
Leiria andCoimbra(–1)	11
Viseu	10
Faro	9
Castelo Branco,Viana do Castelo andVila Real	6
Azores,Beja,Évora,Guarda andMadeira	5
Bragança andPortalegre	4
Europe and Outside Europe	2

The table below lists the parties represented in theAssembly of the Republic during the 2nd legislature (1980–1983) and that also contested the elections:

  Exit poll / Forecast

Polling firm/Link	Date Released			PS		O	Lead
1983 legislative election	25 Apr 1983	27.2 75	12.6 30	36.1 101	18.1 44	6.0 0	8.9
RTP(23:15)	25 Apr 1983	25.4–27.7 69/72	11.5–12.0 27/30	36.0–39.1 98/104	17.2–18.5 42/46	–	10.6 11.4
RTP(20:30)	25 Apr 1983	22.0–25.5 65/72	12.0–14.5 35/40	36.0–38.5 94/102	16.5–19.0 42/46	–	13.0 14.0
Tempo	Apr 1983	24	12.5	38	17	8.5	14
Euroexpansão	29 Jan 1983	24	12	33	19	12	9
1982 local elections	12 Dec 1982	42.7		31.8	20.9	4.6	10.9
Euroexpansão	Sep 1982	22	19	28	18	13	6
Antropos[d]	27 Jul 1981	42.0		36.1	13.9	8.0	5.9
		25.1	9.9	42.4	14.0	8.6	17.3
1980 legislative election	5 Oct 1980	47.6 134		27.8 74	16.8 41	7.8 1	19.8

Party		Votes	%	+/–	Seats	+/–
	Socialist Party[e][a]	2,061,309	36.11	+8.34	101	+35
	Social Democratic Party[b]	1,554,804	27.24	—	75	–7
	United People Alliance[c]	1,031,609	18.07	+1.32	44	+3
	Democratic and Social Centre[b]	716,705	12.56	—	30	–16
	Christian Democratic Party	39,180	0.69	+0.29	0	0
	People's Monarchist Party	27,635	0.48	—	0	–6
	Popular Democratic Union	27,260	0.48	–0.90	0	–1
	Popular Democratic Union–Revolutionary Socialist Party	25,222	0.44	—	0	—
	Portuguese Workers' Communist Party	20,995	0.37	–0.22	0	0
	Workers' Party of Socialist Unity	19,657	0.34	–1.04	0	0
	Revolutionary Socialist Party	13,327	0.23	–0.73	0	0
	Socialist Workers League	11,500	0.20	New	0	New
	Portuguese Marxist–Leninist Communist Organization	6,113	0.11	+0.05	0	0
	Democratic Party of the Atlantic	5,523	0.10	–0.04	0	0
	Communist Party (Reconstructed)[f]	86	0.00	New	0	New
Total		5,560,925	100.00	–	250	0
Valid votes		5,560,925	97.43	–0.29
Invalid votes		104,276	1.83	+0.12
Blank votes		42,494	0.74	+0.17
Total votes		5,707,695	100.00	–
Registered voters/turnout		7,337,064	77.79	–6.15
Source: Comissão Nacional de Eleições[21]

• 
  Winner and seats by constituency.
• 
  Most voted political force bymunicipality.

TheCentral Bloc government had become deeply unpopular by 1984, with the consequences of theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout to save public finances and the economy hitting hard on the population.^[22] The budget cuts and increasing poverty were creating deep disagreements between PS and PSD, but also within both parties rifts were being formed. In theSocial Democrats, these rifts came to a breaking point in February 1985 with party leaderCarlos Mota Pinto resigning and announcing he would contest the next leadership ballot.^[23] But, Mota Pinto died unexpectedly just days prior to the 1985 PSD congress andAníbal Cavaco Silva, which was against theCentral Bloc, was elected as leader.^[24] Shortly after his election as party leader, Cavaco Silva withdraws the PSD support to the Central Bloc, and the government falls. President Ramalho Eanes decides to dissolve Parliament and call a snap election for6 October 1985.^[25]

• Comissão Nacional de EleiçõesArchived 2005-04-08 at theWayback Machine
• Centro de Estudos do Pensamento Político

• Politics of Portugal
• List of political parties in Portugal
• Elections in Portugal

• Legislative elections in Portugal
• 1983 elections in Portugal
• April 1983 in Europe

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