2009 Portuguese legislative election

In the February 2005 early election, the Socialists, under the leadership of José Sócrates, won 45 percent of the votes and 121 MPs, the first time ever the Socialists won an absolute majority,^[4] whereas the PSD suffered a heavy defeat, achieving their worst results since 1983,^[4] and faced with this failure, the then PSD leader and outgoing Prime Minister, Pedro Santana Lopes, resigned from the leadership.^[5]

During the first months in his government, Sócrates raised taxes to reduce the deficit and initiated a policy of strict fiscal control.^[6] At the same time, he faced a very harsh summer with severe wildfires across the country.^[7] That same October, the Socialists suffered a heavy defeat in the 2005 local elections, winning just 108 cities, a drop of four, against the PSD's 158 mayoral holds, with the party unable to regain control of Lisbon and Porto.^[8] In January 2006, a new president was elected, with Aníbal Cavaco Silva, prime pinister between 1985 and 1995, becoming the first center-right candidate to win a presidential election, although only just.^[9] The PS candidate, former prime minister and president Mário Soares, polled a disappointing third place with just 14% of the votes.^[10] In 2007, a referendum for the legalization of abortion was held. After the failure of the 1998 referendum, the Yes side prevailed winning 59 percent of the votes against the No's 41 percent, making abortion legal in Portugal.^[11]

While the deficit reduction had been successful, and with the economy growing around 2 percent of GDP by 2007,^[12] the government faced heavy opposition for its policies, particularly from teachers unions.^[13] In March 2008, more than 100,000 teachers protested in Lisbon against Sócrates and his Education minister, Maria de Lurdes Rodrigues.^[14]

José Sócrates four-year term was also marred by a series of corruption and sleaze accusations against the Prime Minister himself, with the two main cases being the Independent affair and the Freeport affair.^[15] In the first, Sócrates was accused of obtaining his degree in engineering by irregular means from the Independente University, with this case, plus further irregularities, leading to the closure of the university.^[16][17] Several years later, the Public Prosecution office ruled that Sócrates indeed obtained his degree illegally.^[18] In the second case, the Freeport affair, Sócrates was accused, as environment minister (1999–2002), of allegedly ignoring environmental restrictions, due to interventions from members of his own family, in order to allow the construction of a shopping mall in Alcochete by the British company Freeport.^[19] Regarding this case, the end of a primetime evening news show on TVI network, anchored by Manuela Moura Guedes, also led to accusations of pressure from Sócrates and the PS to end the evening news show, as it had several reports on the Freeport affair and an unfavorable coverage towards the Prime Minister.^[20] The Freeport affair was ultimately closed due to lack of evidence.^[21]

Entering 2009, Portugal was strongly affected by the 2008 financial crisis and entered in a recession,^[22] alongside the government facing problems in the banking sector, with the collapse of BPP and the bailout and nationalization of BPN, a bank with figures close to President Cavaco Silva.^[23][24] As a result, the government adopted stimulus measures that worsened public finances, increasing the deficit and the national debt.^[25] In the European elections of June 2009, the PSD defied expectations by winning a European election for the first time since 1989, with 31.7 percent of the votes, while the Socialists suffered a huge defeat, obtaining just 26.5 percent of the votes, a drop of 18 points.^[26]

Electoral system

Official logo of the election.

Ballot for the district of Setúbal.

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.^[39]

The number of seats assigned to each district depends on the district magnitude.^[40] 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.^[41] Changes to the electoral registration system, approved in 2008, which made registration automatic based on each voter's Identity card, led to a significant increase in the number of registered voters, from 8,9 million in 2005 to 9,5 million in 2009.^[42]

For these elections, and compared with the 2005 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following:^[43]

More information District, Number of MPs ...

District	Number of MPs	Map
Lisbon(–1)	47	19 6 39 5 3 16 9 4 10 4 10 10 47 2 3 17 3 8 6 5 2 2
Porto(+1)	39
Braga(+1)	19
Setúbal	17
Aveiro(+1)	16
Leiria, Santarém and Coimbra	10
Viseu	9
Faro	8
Madeira and Viana do Castelo	6
Azores and Vila Real	5
Castelo Branco(–1) and Guarda	4
Beja, Bragança(–1) and Évora	3
Portalegre, Europe and Outside Europe	2

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Once more, the possibility of a joint PSD/CDS–PP coalition was touched upon, but it was quickly rejected by the Social Democrats (PSD).^[44] The table below lists the parties represented in the Assembly of the Republic during the 10th legislature (2005–2009) and that also partook in the election:

The table below shows voter turnout throughout election day including voters from Overseas.

More information Turnout, Time ...

Turnout	Time
	12:00			16:00			19:00
	2005	2009	±	2005	2009	±	2005	2009	±
Total	21.93%	21.29%	0.64 pp	50.94%	43.30%	7.64 pp	64.26%	59.68%	4.58 pp
Sources[59][60][61][62]

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