1999 Portuguese legislative election

← 1995 10 October 1999 2002 →
← outgoing members elected members →
All 230 seats in theAssembly of the Republic 116 seats needed for a majority
Registered	8,864,604 0.5%
Turnout	5,415,150 (61.1%) 5.2pp
First party Second party Third party   Leader António Guterres José Durão Barroso Carlos Carvalhas Party PS PSD PCP Alliance CDU Leader since 23 February 1992 2 May 1999 5 December 1992 Leader's seat Castelo Branco Lisbon Lisbon Last election 112 seats, 43.8% 88 seats, 34.1% 15 seats, 8.6% Seats won 115 81 17 Seat change 3 7 2 Popular vote 2,385,922 1,750,158 487,058 Percentage 44.1% 32.3% 9.0% Swing 0.3pp 1.8pp 0.4pp   Fourth party Fifth party   Leader Paulo Portas Francisco Louçã Party CDS–PP BE Leader since 22 March 1998 24 March 1999 Leader's seat Aveiro Lisbon Last election 15 seats, 9.0% Did not contest Seats won 15 2 Seat change 0 2 Popular vote 451,643 132,333 Percentage 8.3% 2.4% Swing 0.7pp New party
Vote winner strength by district Results by constituency
Prime Minister before election António Guterres PS Prime Minister after election António Guterres PS

The1999 Portuguese legislative election took place on 10 October. The election renewed all 230 members of theAssembly of the Republic.

After becoming the first minority government in Portuguese democracy to complete a full 4-year term,^[1] theSocialist Party was aiming a second term under the lead of Prime MinisterAntónio Guterres, as a good economy and Portugal's growing prestige, following theExpo 1998 and the support for theEast-Timor cause, were strengthening the PS position.^[2] Polls leading up to the election predicted a comfortable PS majority government. Adding to this, the main opposition party, the Social Democratic Party (PSD), was exiting an internal crisis after former leaderMarcelo Rebelo de Sousa resigned in March 1999 amid disagreements with the CDS-People's Party leader,Paulo Portas, regarding a future PSD/CDS alliance for these elections.^[3] The party elected, in a snap party congress in May 1999,José Manuel Durão Barroso as new leader.

Despite opinion polls predictions, the election results were labeled as a disappointment for the Socialists as the party failed to win a historical absolute majority by just one MP and barely improved their 1995 score, just 0.3 percentage points.^[4] The disappointing PS score would create instability in Guterres second government in the years to follow.^[5] TheSocial Democratic Party was still away from the preferences of the majority of the Portuguese people, after the ten years cycle under the lead ofCavaco Silva that had terminated four years before, and lost 7 MPs, compared with 1995, and gathered 32 percent of the votes. The Democratic Unity Coalition achieved an important climb in the scorecard, against those who predicted its irreversible decline after the end of the Socialist Bloc in the early 1990s. The CDS-People's Party was able to hold on to its 15 MPs after tensions with the PSD earlier that year. For the first time, the Left Bloc, formed after the merger of several minor left-wing parties became represented in the parliament after electing two MPs.

Turnout in this election was very low, only being surpassed by all elections after2009 when turnout stands below 60 percent. Overall,voter turnout was only 61 percent of voters, one of the lowest ever recorded.

After leading his party to two successive defeats, in the1995 election and in the1996 Presidential election, then PSD leaderFernando Nogueira resigned.^[6] A party congress to elect a new leader was called for late March 1996. For that leadership ballot,Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announced his candidacy, just a few days after saying a phrase that would become famous in Portuguese politics, "Not even if Christ descends to earth, will I run."^[7] Marcelo facedPedro Santana Lopes, which repeated his failed bid of 1995. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was easily elected as PSD leader.^[8] The results were the following:

Then CDS leader,Manuel Monteiro, resigned from the leadership after the party's poor results in the1997 local elections.^[9]Paulo Portas, which had a tense relationship with Monteiro, announced his candidacy but faced the candidate of the "Monteiro wing",Maria José Nogueira Pinto. The congress was very tense, with strong accusations between both candidates, but in the end Paulo Portas was elected as new party leader:^[10]

Then PSD leaderMarcelo Rebelo de Sousa plan to creat an electoral alliance with theCDS – People's Party was splitting his party, but nonetheless, the alliance was approved in a party congress in February 1999.^[11] However, at the same a time, a scandal involving CDS–PP leaderPaulo Portas, the "Moderna affair", in which corrupt deals and bad management were done inModerna University,^[12] was creating a bad mood between PSD and CDS–PP and, specially, between the two party's leaders.^[13] In late March, Paulo Portas gives an interview onSIC that precipitated Marcelo's resignation. In that interview, Portas says that the PSD needs to come clean and say if they trust the CDS leader, and that Marcelo told him that a majority of the PSD leadership doesn't like him and feels he's a liability to the alliance.^[14] Feeling betrayed and seeing that Portas was untrustworthy, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa resigned from the PSD leadership. A snap party congress was called for early May, and, as the sole candidate,José Manuel Durão Barroso was unanimously elected as the new PSD leader:

TheAssembly 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 amotion of no confidence to be approved.^[15]

The number of seats assigned to each district depends on thedistrict magnitude.^[16] 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.^[17]

For these elections, and compared with the 1995 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following:^[18]

District	Number of MPs	Map
Lisbon(–1)	49	17 6 37 5 4 15 9 4 10 5 10 10 49 3 4 17 3 8 5 5 2 2
Porto	37
Braga(+1)	17
Setúbal	17
Aveiro(+1)	15
Leiria,Santarém andCoimbra	10
Viseu	9
Faro	8
Viana do Castelo	6
Azores,Castelo Branco,Madeira andVila Real	5
Bragança,Évora andGuarda	4
Beja(–1) andPortalegre	3
Europe and Outside Europe	2

The table below lists the parties represented in theAssembly of the Republic during the 7th legislature (1995–1999) and that also partook in the election:

The following table shows the opinion polls of voting intention of the Portuguese voters before the election. Included is also the result of the Portuguese general elections in 1995 and 1999 for reference.

Note, until 2000, the publication of opinion polls in the last week of the campaign was forbidden.

  Exit poll

Polling firm/Link	Date Released						O	Lead
1999 legislative election	10 Oct 1999	44.1 115	32.3 81	8.3 15	9.0 17	2.4 2	3.9 0	11.8
UCP	10 Oct 1999	46.0	30.3	7.5	8.5	2.5	5.2	15.7
Seeds	10 Oct 1999	46.3	31.5	8.0	9.8	2.8	1.6	14.8
Intercampus	10 Oct 1999	46.3	28.6	8.3	9.5	3.2	4.1	17.7
Euroexpansão	2 Oct 1999	50	32	8	6	2	2	18
Seeds	1 Oct 1999	47	32	7	8	1	5	15
Metris	1 Oct 1999	48	31	7	7	1	6	17
UCP	1 Oct 1999	47.2	30.0	7.2	7.9	2.8	4.9	17.2
Marktest	30 Sep 1999	46.2	30.7	4.2	10.6	2.8	5.5	15.5
Aximage	30 Sep 1999	49	33	6	7	1	4	16
Euroexpansão	25 Sep 1999	50.0	33.8	—	—	—	16.2	16.2
SIC/Visão	23 Sep 1999	46.8	31.8	—	—	—	21.4	15.0
Euroexpansão	18 Sep 1999	49.0	35.4	—	—	—	15.6	13.5
Independente	17 Sep 1999	45.0	34.2	—	—	—	20.8	10.8
UCP	14 Sep 1999	56.4	30.1	—	—	—	13.5	26.3
UCP	29 Jul 1999	52.0	31.6	6.2	6.9	1.9	1.4	20.4
1999 EP elections	13 Jun 1999	43.1	31.1	8.2	10.3	1.8	5.5	12.0
UCP	19 Mar 1999	55.3	32.6[b]		9.3	2.0	0.8	22.7
UCP	Sep 1998	45.3	36.1	5.2	6.9	—	6.5	9.2
1997 local elections	14 Dec 1997	41.3	35.2	6.3	12.0	—	5.2	6.1
UCP	21 Mar 1997	40	33	6.5	8	—	12.5	7
UCP	Dec 1996	47	29	—	—	—	24	18
1995 legislative election	1 Oct 1995	43.8 112	34.1 88	9.1 15	8.6 15	—	4.4 0	9.7

Party		Votes	%	+/–	Seats	+/–
	Socialist Party	2,385,922	44.06	+0.30	115	+3
	Social Democratic Party	1,750,158	32.32	–1.80	81	–7
	Unitary Democratic Coalition[c]	487,058	8.99	+0.42	17	+2
	CDS – People's Party	451,643	8.34	–0.71	15	0
	Left Bloc	132,333	2.44	+1.23	2	+2
	Portuguese Workers' Communist Party	40,006	0.74	+0.04	0	0
	Earth Party	19,938	0.37	+0.23	0	0
	People's Monarchist Party	16,522	0.31	+0.21	0	0
	National Solidarity Party	11,488	0.21	–0.00	0	0
	Humanist Party	7,346	0.14	New	0	New
	Workers' Party of Socialist Unity	4,104	0.08	+0.04	0	0
	Democratic Party of the Atlantic[d]	438	0.01	–0.03	0	0
Total		5,306,956	100.00	–	230	0
Valid votes		5,306,956	98.00	–0.08
Invalid votes		51,230	0.95	–0.19
Blank votes		56,964	1.05	+0.27
Total votes		5,415,150	100.00	–
Registered voters/turnout		8,864,604	61.09	–5.21
Source:Comissão Nacional de Eleições

• 
  Most voted political force bydistrict. (Madeira and Azores not shown)
• 
  Winner and seats by constituency.
• 
  Most voted political force bymunicipality.

Guterres second government was haunted by its failure in winning an absolute majority in the 1999 elections.^[26] The tie between the Government and the opposition created a series of problems to Guterres as all opposition parties, PSD, CDU, CDS–PP and BE, refused to negotiate with the Government. In the 2000 budget, CDS–PP decided to abstain and the budget passed:^[27]

2000 State Budget António Guterres (PS)
Ballot →		15 March 2000
Required majority →		Simple
	Yes •PS (115)	115 / 230
	No •PSD (81) •PCP (15) •PEV (2) •BE (2)	100 / 230
	Abstentions •CDS–PP (15)	15 / 230
	Absentees	0 / 230
Result →		ApprovedY
Sources[28][29]

However, after the 2000 budget, CDS–PP was no longer willing to support Guterres and, the solution found was a controversial one: With a sole CDS–PP MP,Daniel Campelo, Guterres secured the approval of his two following annualState Budgets in exchange for the government financing a cheese factory in Campelo's hometown ofPonte de Lima, inViana do Castelo district. The 2001 and 2002 budgets were approved with the abstention of this sole CDS–PP MP:^[30][31] Campelo was ultimately suspended from CDS–PP, and from November 2000 onwards, sat as anIndependent.^[32][33]

2001 State Budget António Guterres (PS)
Ballot →		29 November 2000
Required majority →		Simple
	Yes •PS (115)	115 / 230
	No •PSD (81) •PCP (15) •CDS–PP (14) •PEV (2) •BE (2)	114 / 230
	Abstentions • Ind.Daniel Campelo (1)	1 / 230
	Absentees	0 / 230
Result →		ApprovedY
Sources[34]

2002 State Budget António Guterres (PS)
Ballot →		30 November 2001
Required majority →		Simple
	Yes •PS (115)	115 / 230
	No •PSD (81) •PCP (15) •CDS–PP (14) •PEV (2) •BE (2)	114 / 230
	Abstentions • Ind.Daniel Campelo (1)	1 / 230
	Absentees	0 / 230
Result →		ApprovedY
Sources[35]

Besides his fragile majority to approve major legislation, Guterres also suffered with a lot of instability within his own cabinet, with two reshuffles in just four months during 2001. TheHintze Ribeiro Bridge collapse generated public anger against the government, which eroded even more Guterres' popularity.^[36] By 2001, the economy was also showing strong signs of slowdown, in a time when Portugal was about to enter into theEuro common currency and was suffering from the global impact of theSeptember 11 attacks.^[37] All these problems culminated in theDecember 2001 local elections, where the PS suffered a big defeat and saw major urban centers, mainlyLisbon andPorto, swing dramatically to the right-wing, so, in response, Guterres announced his resignation as Prime Minister.^[38]PresidentJorge Sampaio dissolved Parliament and called an election for17 March 2002.

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

• Preliminary results of the 1999 election
• Comissão Nacional de EleiçõesArchived 2005-04-08 at theWayback Machine
• Centro de Estudos do Pensamento Político

• Legislative elections in Portugal
• 1999 elections in Portugal
• October 1999 in Europe

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