2015 Government formation After the
2015 elections, President
Aníbal Cavaco Silva asked incumbent Prime Minister
Pedro Passos Coelho to form a minority government, as the
Portugal Ahead coalition won the most votes and seats in the election. Passos Coelho second government was sworn in on 30 October 2015. However, during this period, the
Socialist Party, the
Left Bloc and the
Communist Party reached a historic agreement in order to bring down the Passos Coelho minority government and support a Socialist minority government led by
António Costa.
Paulo Portas, CDS–PP leader, labeled the agreement as the
Geringonça (), which became the name the left-wing agreement would be known for. On 10 November 2015, the left-wing parties proposed a vote of rejection to the Portugal Ahead's government program, which was approved by a 123 to 107 vote, thus bringing down the government. On 26 November 2015, António Costa was sworn in as
Prime Minister. After a few months of
cohabitation with
President Aníbal Cavaco Silva (PSD), Costa would have to cohabit with
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa (PSD), the winner of the
2016 presidential election, in which the Socialists did not support any candidate. Costa's term was marred by the 2017 deadly wildfires,
in June and
in October, with following reports showing
mismanagement and lack of response and coordination, and later also by the
Tancos arms theft scandal, which would have an impact during the 2019 election campaign. A new party congress was called to elect a new leader. There were two candidates in the ballot:
Assunção Cristas, supported by Portas, and
Miguel Mattos Chaves, critical of Portas leadership. Cristas was elected by a landslide and the results were the following:
Socialist Party Party leader, and Prime Minister,
António Costa faced a leadership challenge from party member
Daniel Adrião in the party's 2016 leadership election. There were 49,127 party members registered to cast a ballot, and Costa was easily re-elected as party leader with 95% of the votes, compared with the less than 3% for Adrião. Two years later, in May 2018, Costa faced another challenge from Adrião, and was once again re-elected, this time with 96% of the votes, against Adrião's 4%. There were 51,191 party members registered to cast a ballot.
Social Democratic Party After a disappointing result in the
2017 local elections, in which the PSD won just 30 percent of the votes and 98 mayoral races against the 38 percent of the PS and its 160 elected mayors,
Pedro Passos Coelho announced he would not run for a 5th term as PSD leader. After that,
Rui Rio, former mayor of Porto (2002–2013), announced he was running for the leadership. Shortly after,
Pedro Santana Lopes, former mayor of Lisbon (2002–2004; 2005) and Prime Minister (2004–2005), announced he was also running for the leadership of the party. Election day was scheduled to January 13, 2018. After a long campaign,
Rui Rio was elected with 54.15 percent of the votes, against the 45.85 percent of Santana Lopes. Turnout was 60.3 percent. The results were the following: Rui Rio was officially confirmed as party leader in the PSD congress, in Lisbon, between 16 and 18 February 2018. Just seven months after this leadership election, in early July 2018,
Pedro Santana Lopes announced he was leaving the Social Democratic Party and would form his own party. A few weeks later he announced the creation of a new party, the
Alliance. Following several months of bad polling for the PSD, Rio's leadership started to be heavily criticized and by January 2019,
Luís Montenegro, former PSD parliamentary leader, challenged Rio to call a leadership ballot, with Montenegro announcing his candidacy against Rio. However, Rio refused to call a leadership ballot, but decided to call a motion of confidence on his leadership, which he won by a 75 to 50 vote in favour at a meeting of the party's national council held on 18 January 2019. Following the vote, Montenegro conceded defeat and withdrew his candidacy to the party's leadership.
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 to all of the parties represented in Parliament and the election day must be announced at least 60 days before the election. If an election is called during an ongoing 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, take place no later than 13 October 2019. After meeting with all parties, in December 2018,
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announced that he would call a general election for 6 October 2019.
Electoral system 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. 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 2015 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following:
Early voting Voters were also able to
vote early, which would happen one week before election day, on 29 September 2019. Voters had to register in order to be eligible to cast an early ballot. Between 22 and 26 September, 56,287 voters requested to vote early. On 29 September, 50,638 voters (90.0 percent of voters that requested) cast an early ballot. ==Parties==