2011–2014 Portugal bailout management After the PSD/CDS–PP government was sworn in, a series of austerity policies, following the bailout deal, were enacted and created several backlash and protests. In September 2012, further austerity policies led to one of the biggest demonstrations against a government in Portuguese democracy, with more than 1 million people going out to the streets across the country. Because of this massive protest, the coalition government was deeply shaken and was forced to drop several policies. In the summer of 2013, another crisis in the coalition government emerged. The
Finance Minister Vítor Gaspar resigned in late June 2013, and
Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho choose the Treasury Secretary,
Maria Luís Albuquerque, to be the next Finance minister. However,
CDS – People's Party (CDS-PP) leader,
Paulo Portas, criticized the choice of the new minister and announced his "irrevocable" resignation from the government. Prime Minister Passos Coelho didn't accepted Portas's resignation and refused also to leave his office, opting, instead, to negotiate a new government organization with Portas. A deal was reached a few days later, in which Portas would become deputy prime minister and with more powers on economic affairs. But,
President Aníbal Cavaco Silva refused to accept the deal and forced negotiations between PSD and PS, in which a deal between parties to maintain economic stability and snap elections in 2014 were on the table. Despite the Presidential pressures, talks between PSD and PS fell apart and Cavaco Silva was forced to accept the PSD/CDS–PP original deal. The
Social Democrats (PSD) suffered a considerable setback in the
2013 local elections by gathering just 31 percent of the votes and 106 mayors, a drop of 33 cities, while the
Socialists (PS) obtained their best result till that date, 150 mayors, a gain of 18, and won almost 37 percent of the votes. In May 2014, Portugal was successful in exiting the economic bailout that was negotiated in 2011.
Leadership changes and challenges Socialist Party After
José Sócrates resignation from the party's leadership, due to the poor result of the Socialists in the
2011 elections, a snap leadership election was called to elect a new leader for 22 and 23 July 2011. There were two candidates on the ballot:
António José Seguro and
Francisco Assis. Seguro was elected by a landslide and the results were the following: Two years later, in April 2013, Seguro was challenged by party member
Aires Pedro to the leadership. There were 43,034 party members registered to cast a ballot, and Seguro was easily re-elected with nearly 97% of the votes, against the just 3% for Pedro. Seguro's leadership was constantly marred by internal infighting, coming mainly from then
Mayor of Lisbon António Costa, which despite forging a deal with Seguro to not challenge him for the leadership in early 2013, Costa never really ended speculations about it. Following the party's disappointing result in the
2014 European elections, in which the PS got just 31 percent of the votes against the 28 percent of the PSD/CDS coalition,
António Costa called the results "tiny" (
poucochinho), and challenged
António José Seguro for the leadership. Seguro rejected a leadership ballot, but called an open primary, for 28 September 2014, on who should be the party's candidate for prime minister in the 2015 election. It was the first open primary in the history of the party, and of Portugal. In end, only two candidates ran: António José Seguro, General Secretary of the party at the time of the primary, and António Costa, mayor of Lisbon. Nearly 250,000 people registered to cast a ballot in the primary. António Costa won the primary by a landslide with 67.9 percent of the vote against the 31.7 percent of Antonio José Seguro, resulting in Seguro conceding defeat and resigning as General Secretary of the party. Thereafter, Costa was elected as the new Socialist General Secretary on 22 November 2014. The results were the following: The start of António Costa's term as PS leader was, however, marred by the arrest of former Socialist Prime Minister
José Sócrates on 21 November 2014, due to an inquiry which accused the former prime minister of crimes of tax fraud, money laundering and corruption.
Left Bloc One year after the disappointing results of the party in the
2011 elections, the then
Left Bloc leader,
Francisco Louçã, decided to leave the leadership and a party convention was held to elect a new leader. In November 2012, the party elected a dual leadership headed by
João Semedo and
Catarina Martins. Just 7 days after the very close result in the party's convention, on 30 November 2014,
João Semedo resigned as party coordinator and
Catarina Martins became to sole party coordinator.
Date According to the Portuguese Constitution, an election must be called between 14 September and 14 October of the year that the legislature ends. The election is called by the
President of Portugal but is not called at the request of the
prime minister; however, the president must listen all the parties represented in Parliament and the election day must be announced at least 60 days before the election. If an election is called in the middle of the legislature (Dissolution of Parliament) it must be held at least in 55 days. Election day is the same in all multi-seats constituencies, and should fall on a Sunday or national holiday. The next legislative election must, therefore, took place no later than 11 October 2015. After meeting with all of the parties represented in parliament on 21 July 2015, the President
Aníbal Cavaco Silva called the election for 4 October. 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. For these elections, and compared with the 2011 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following: ==Parties==