1976 Portuguese legislative election

The Portuguese legislative election of 1976 took place on 25 April, exactly one year after the previous election, and two years after the Carnation Revolution. With a new Constitution approved, the country's main aim was economic recovery and strengthening its democratic institutions.

The Socialist Party won a plurality of legislative seats, and its leader Mário Soares became the Prime Minister of the 1st Constitutional government on 23 July 1976. The lack of a socialist majority forced his party to form an unexpected coalition with the Democratic and Social Center, a right-wing party. The nature of this coalition, between a socialist party and a conservative party that voted against the new constitution because of its socialist influences, surprised most Portuguese voters and marked the start of the Socialist Party's right-wing turn that would soon be attacked by all the left due to the new government's measures against left-wing reforms following the Carnation Revolution, mainly concerning agrarian reform.

The Social Democratic Party (then known as the Democratic People's Party, PPD) won the second most seats and the Portuguese Communist Party achieved considerable gains that reflected its growing influence, mainly in the south of the country.

Electoral system 
The Assembly of the Republic has 263 members elected to four-year terms. The total number of MPs increased to 263 from the 1975 total of 250 MPs. 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 132 (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.

Parties 
The major parties involved and the respective leaders:

 Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), Álvaro Cunhal
 Socialist Party (PS), Mário Soares
 Democratic People's Party (PPD), Francisco Sá Carneiro
 Democratic and Social Centre (CDS), Freitas do Amaral

National summary of votes and seats

|-
| colspan=11| 
|- 
! rowspan="2" colspan=2 style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=left|Parties
! rowspan="2" style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|Votes
! rowspan="2" style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|%
! rowspan="2" style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|±
! colspan="5" style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align="center"|Seats
! rowspan="2" style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" |MPs %/votes %
|- style="background-color:#E9E9E9"
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align=center|1975
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align=center|1976
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|±
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|%
! style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|±
|-

|1,912,921||34.89||3.0||116||107||9||40.68||5.7||1.17
|-

|1,335,381||24.35||2.0||81||73||8||27.76||4.6||1.14
|-

|876,007||15.98||8.4||16||42||26||15.97||9.6||1.00
|-

|788,830||14.39||1.9||30||40||10||15.21||3.2||1.06
|-
|style="width: 10px" bgcolor=#E2062C align="center" | 
|align=left|People's Democratic Union
|91,690||1.67||0.9||1||1||0||0.38||0.0||0.23
|-

|42,162||0.77||0.4||0||0||0||0.00||0.0||0.0
|-

|36,200||0.66||||||0||||0.00||||0.0
|-

|31,332||0.57||0.4||0||0||0||0.00||0.0||0.0
|-

|29,874||0.54||||||0||||0.00||||0.0
|-

|28,320||0.52||0.1||0||0||0||0.00||0.0||0.0
|-

|16,269||0.30||0.1||0||0||0||0.00||0.0||0.0
|-

|15,830||0.29||||||0||||0.00||||0.0
|-

|15,778||0.29||||||0||||0.00||||0.0
|-

|5,171||0.09||||||0||||0.00||||0.0
|-
|colspan=2 align=left style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|Total valid 
|width="65" align="right" style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|5,225,765
|width="40" align="right" style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|95.30
|width="40" align="right" style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|2.3
|width="40" align="right" style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|250
|width="40" align="right" style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|263
|width="40" align="right" style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|13
|width="40" align="right" style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|100.00
|width="40" align="right" style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|0.0
|width="40" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"|—
|-
|colspan=2|Invalid ballots
|257,696||4.70||2.3||colspan=6 rowspan=2|
|-
|colspan=2 align=left style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|Total (turnout 83.53%)
|width="65" align="right" style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|5,483,461
|width="40" align="right" style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|100.00
|width="40" align="right" style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|8.2
|-
| colspan=11 align=left|Portuguese Democratic Movement won 5 seats and the Independent Democratic Association of Macau won 1 seat in the 1975election. Both parties did not contested this election.
|-
| colspan=11 align=left | Source: Comissão Nacional de Eleições
|}

Distribution by constituency

|- class="unsortable"
!rowspan=2|Constituency!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S
!rowspan=2|TotalS
|- class="unsortable" style="text-align:center;"
!colspan=2 | PS
!colspan=2 | PPD
!colspan=2 | CDS
!colspan=2 | PCP
!colspan=2 | UDP
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Angra do Heroísmo 
| 30.4
| 1
| style="background:; color:white;"|51.8
| 1
| 12.1
| -
| 1.5
| -
|colspan="2" bgcolor="#AAAAAA"|
| 2
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Aveiro
| 30.8
| 5
| style="background:; color:white;"|35.2
| 6
| 22.5
| 4
| 3.7
| -
| 0.9
| -
| 15
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Beja
| 32.0
| 2
| 8.2
| -
| 4.2
| -
| style="background:red; color:white;"|44.0
| 4
| 2.2
| -
| 6
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Braga
| style="background:; color:white;"|32.3
| 6
| 28.6
| 5
| 21.2
| 4
| 4.2
| -
| 1.0
| -
| 15
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Bragança
| 22.6
| 1
| style="background:; color:white;"|33.3
| 2
| 28.3
| 2
| 2.7
| -
| 0.8
| -
| 5
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Castelo Branco
| style="background:; color:white;"|36.4
| 3
| 22.6
| 2
| 19.9
| 2
| 6.7
| -
| 1.1
| -
| 7
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Coimbra
| style="background:; color:white;"|40.9
| 6
| 26.7
| 4
| 12.5
| 1
| 7.3
| 1
| 1.2
| -
| 12
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | EvoraÉvora
| 30.3
| 2
| 9.2
| -
| 8.0
| -
| style="background:red; color:white;"|43.2
| 4
| 2.6
| -
| 6
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Faro
| style="background:; color:white;"|44.6
| 6
| 19.3
| 2
| 6.8
| -
| 14.5
| 1
| 2.6
| -
| 9
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Funchal 
| 24.9
| 1
| style="background:; color:white;"|53.0
| 4
| 13.3
| 1
| 1.5
| -
| 1.3
| -
| 6
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Guarda
| 25.2
| 2
| 25.7
| 2
| style="background:; color:white;"|32.1
| 2
| 2.9
| -
| 1.1
| -
| 6
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Horta
| 34.2
| -
| style="background:; color:white;"|57.0
| 1
| 4.3
| -
| 1.5
| -
|colspan="2" bgcolor="#AAAAAA"|
| 1
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Leiria
| 31.1
| 4
| style="background:; color:white;"|31.2
| 4
| 19.4
| 2
| 7.3
| 1
| 1.0
| -
| 11
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Lisbon
| style="background:; color:white;"|38.3
| 25
| 16.4
| 10
| 13.2
| 8
| 21.8
| 14
| 2.6
| 1
| 58
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Ponta Delgada 
| 35.4
| 1
| style="background:; color:white;"|45.6
| 2
| 11.8
| -
| 1.5
| -
|colspan="2" bgcolor="#AAAAAA"|
| 3
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Portalegre
| style="background:; color:white;"|41.9
| 3
| 10.1
| -
| 13.9
| -
| 22.0
| 1
| 1.0
| -
| 4
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Porto
| style="background:; color:white;"|40.7
| 18
| 27.0
| 11
| 15.7
| 6
| 8.4
| 3
| 1.5
| -
| 38
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Santarém
| style="background:; color:white;"|38.5
| 6
| 19.5
| 3
| 13.9
| 2
| 16.1
| 2
| 1.7
| -
| 13
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Setúbal
| 32.2
| 7
| 8.4
| 1
| 4.4
| -
| style="background:red; color:white;"|44.4
| 9
| 2.8
| -
| 17
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Viana do Castelo
| 25.5
| 2
| style="background:; color:white;"|32.8
| 3
| 23.5
| 2
| 6.6
| -
| 0.9
| -
| 7
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Vila Real
| 26.3
| 2
| style="background:; color:white;"|39.0
| 4
| 18.3
| 1
| 3.1
| -
| 0.9
| -
| 7
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Viseu
| 23.0
| 3
| style="background:; color:white;"|32.2
| 4
| 31.2
| 4
| 2.3
| -
| 0.9
| -
| 11
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | zEurope
| style="background:; color:white;"|46.1
| 1
| 32.2
| 1
| 6.9
| -
| 10.1
| -
| 0.8
| -
| 2
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | zRest of the World
| 6.3
| -
| style="background:; color:white;"|53.2
| 1
| 33.7
| 1
| 1.4
| -
| 0.4
| -
| 2
|-
|- class="unsortable" style="background:#E9E9E9"
| style="text-align:left;" | Total
| style="background:; color:white;"|34.9
| 107
| 24.4
| 73
| 16.0
| 42
| 14.4
| 40
| 1.7
| 1
| 263
|-
| colspan=12 style="text-align:left;" | Source: Comissão Nacional de Eleições
|}

Maps

References

External links
 Comissão Nacional de Eleições
 Centro de Estudos do Pensamento Político

See also
 Politics of Portugal
 List of political parties in Portugal
 Elections in Portugal

Category:Legislative elections in Portugal
Category:1976 elections in Portugal
Category:April 1976 events in Europe