The 2015 Portuguese Legislative Election: Widening the Coalitional Space and Bringing the Extreme Left in

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the Portuguese legislative election held on 4 October 2015 by exploring the economic and political context in which the election took place, the opinion polls, party positions and campaign issues, the results and, finally, the process that led to the formation of the first Socialist minority government supported by far-left parties. Due to this outcome, despite the relative majority of the votes obtained by the incumbent centre-right coalition, we argue that this election result cannot be interpreted as a victory of austerity, but rather as the first step towards contract parliamentarism in Portugal.

Keywords:

• Portugal
• António Costa
• BE
• PCP
• PS

Notes

1. Elisabetta De Giorgi is particularly responsible for the first two sections, José Santana-Pereira for the third and fourth sections, while the introduction, conclusions and fifth section are the result of joint work.

2. Title retrieved from the British Telegraph, 5 October 2015. The Spanish El Pais, Italian La Repubblica and American New York Times used similar wordings in their depiction of the election results.

3. March (2008) describes the BE as a radical-left party and PCP as an extreme-left party; for the sake of parsimony we use the terms ‘far left’ or ‘extreme left’ when referring to these two parties collectively.

4. Data available from Eurostat (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat).

5. Standard Eurobarometers 76 and 83. These data are available at: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb_arch_en.htm

6. R. Gaudêncio & M. J. Lopes, ‘O mundo gira, ele resiste. Mas não serà sempre assim’, Publico, 6 September 2015, available online at: http://www.publico.pt/politica/noticia/o-mundo-gira-ele-resiste-isto-nao-sera-sempre-assim-1,706,839

7. According to Law 19/2003, article 5, point 7, regarding party and campaign financing, in legislative elections parties that are not able to elect representatives but nevertheless gather more than 50,000 votes may request state subventions. This was the case of PAN in 2011 (around 58,000 votes).

8. The poll analysis is based on the data made available by the research project Public Opinion and Sentiment Tracking, Analysis, and Research (POPSTAR), which aggregates and computes estimations of voting intentions based on all the opinion polls published by the media in Portugal. The data are available in the project's website: www.popstar.pt.

9. Standard Eurobarometer 83. These data are available at: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb_arch_en.htm.

10. ‘Debate televisivo entre Passos e Costa com audiência histórica de 3,4 milhões’, Expresso, 10 September 2015, available online at: http://expresso.sapo.pt/politica/2015-09-10-Debate-televisivo-entre-Passos-e-Costa-com-audiencia-historica-de-34-milhoes

11. Two opinion polls were conducted after the debate by polling companies Aximage and Eurosondagem. Both display the same pattern: the proportion of respondents who consider that António Costa won the debate is greater than that of respondents who claim that Passos Coelho had a better performance.

12. ‘Histórico: debate Passos/Costa na rádio ouvido por quase 1,3 milhões’, Expresso, 18 September 2015, available online at: http://expresso.sapo.pt/politica/2015-09-18-Historico-debate-Passos-Costa-na-radio-ouvido-por-quase-13-milhoes

13. ‘8 análises ao debate Passos-Costa’, Observador, 17 September 2015, available online at: http://observador.pt/2015/09/17/8-analises-ao-debate-passos-costa/ In terms of public opinion, a poll conducted in the aftermath of the debate reports the following findings: 43 per cent of the respondents believed that Passos Coelho won the debate, against 30 per cent who preferred Costa’s performance. The poll was carried out by Marktest and is available at the ERC (Entidade Reguladora para a Comunicação Social - Media Regulatory Authority) website (www.erc.pt).

14. ‘Petição visa facilitar recenseamento e participação eleitoral de portugueses no estrangeiro’, Lusa, 22 November 2015, available online at: http://www.sapo.pt/noticias/peticao-visa-facilitar-recenseamento-e_565198bf5c2b514f62186ec4

15. Data provided by IDEA, 4 December 2015, available online at: http://www.idea.int/vt/countryview.cfm?id=184.

16. The agreements between the PS and the other parties, signed on 10 November 2015, are available online: Agreement PS/BE (http://www.ps.pt/images/imprensa/comunicados_ps/20151110_PS_BE.pdf); Agreement PS/PCP – the main coalition partner of CDU (http://www.ps.pt/images/imprensa/comunicados_ps/20151110_PS_PCP.pdf); Agreement PS/PEV – the other member of the CDU coalition (http://www.osverdes.pt/media/Parlamento/PosicaoConjuntaPS_PEV.pdf).