2015 Portuguese legislative election

The President of Portugal has the power to dissolve the Assembly of the Republic by their own will. Unlike in other countries, the President can refuse to dissolve the parliament at the request of the Prime Minister or the Assembly of the Republic and all the parties represented in Parliament. If the Prime Minister resigns, the President must appoint a new Prime Minister after listening to all the parties represented in Parliament and then the government programme must be subject to discussion by the Assembly of the Republic, whose members of parliament may present a motion to reject the upcoming government.

The 2014 Portuguese Socialist Party prime ministerial primary was held on 28 September 2014. It was the first open primary in the history of the party, and of Portugal, and elected the party's candidate for Prime Minister for the 2015 general election. There were two candidates running, António José Seguro, General Secretary of the party at the time of the primary, and António Costa, mayor of Lisbon. António Costa won the primary by a landslide with 67.9% of the vote against the 31.7% of Antonio José Seguro, resulting in Seguro conceding defeat and resigning as General Secretary of the party. Costa was next elected new socialist's General Secretary on 22 November 2014.[5]

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.[6] 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.[7] 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.[1]

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.[8]

The number of seats assigned to each district depends on the district magnitude.[9] 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.[10]

For these elections, and compared with the 2011 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following:[11]

District	Number of MPs	Map
Lisbon	47
Porto	39
Braga	19
Setúbal	18 (+1)
Aveiro	16
Leiria	10
Coimbra, Faro, Viseu and Santarém*	9 (-1)
Madeira and Viana do Castelo	6
Azores and Vila Real	5
Castelo Branco and Guarda	4
Beja, Bragança, Évora	3
Portalegre, Europe and Outside Europe	2
*Santarém district lost one seat compared with 2011.

After changes in the electoral law that obligated that all of the parties contesting an election should be represented in debates, the 3 main TV networks RTP, SIC and TVI proposed 3 debates between the two main candidates António Costa and Pedro Passos Coelho and also a series of head-to-head debates between various party leaders and one debate with all party leaders.[18] After meetings with the various parties, it was decided to hold two face-to-face debates between António Costa and Pedro Passos Coelho in which one will be broadcast on television and the other on radio. There was also going to be a debate between all the parties represented in Parliament but it was cancelled by the refusal of the PSD/CDS-PP coalition to have only the leader of the PSD on the debate and not also the leader of the CDS-PP, Paulo Portas[19][20]

Completed televised debates:

Portuguese legislative election debates, 2015
N°.	Date	Broadcaster	Moderator(s)	Invitees				Notes
Name  Invited Participant.    N  Non-invitee.						CDU
1	1 September	RTP Informação	Vítor Gonçalves	N	N	Jerónimo	Martins
2	8 September	SIC Notícias	Ana Lourenço	Portas	N	N	Martins
3	9 September	RTP1 SIC TVI	Judite de Sousa Clara de Sousa João Adelino Faria	P. Coelho	Costa	N	N	Broadcast simultaneously on the 3 major TV networks.
4	11 September	RTP Informação	Vítor Gonçalves	P. Coelho	N	N	Martins
5	14 September	TVI24	Pedro Pinto	N	Costa	N	Martins
6	16 September	SIC Notícias	Ana Lourenço	N	Costa	Jerónimo	N
7	17 September	Antena 1 RR TSF	Graça Franco Maria Flor Pedroso Paulo Baldaia	P. Coelho	Costa	N	N	Broadcast simultaneously on 3 national radio stations.
8	18 September	TVI24	José Alberto Carvalho	Portas	N	Apolónia	N
Candidate viewed as "most convincing" in each debate
Debate			Poll source			CDU		Notes
3	9 September	RTP1/SIC/TVI	Aximage	35.7	48.0			16.3% said it was a tie.
			Eurosondagem	31.8	40.0			28.2% said neither won or it was a tie.
7	17 September	Antena 1/RR/TSF	Marktest	42.5	29.5			14.2% said neither won and 13.8% were undecided.

• 
  Most voted political force by district or autonomous region.
• 
  Most voted political force by municipality.
• 
  Percentage of votes for the left-wing parties represented in the Parliament, by district or autonomous region.
• 
  Most voted-for political fields by district/autonomous regions: Left: PS, BE, CDU; Right: PàF.

The Socialist Party reached agreements with the three other left-wing parties: the Left Bloc, the Communists and the Greens. Those agreements were eventually approved by the national organs of the Socialist Party on 8 November.[35][36] On 10 November, the Portugal Ahead government programme was rejected in a motion of rejection by a vote of 123 to 107 MPs.[37] On 26 November, a new government was established as a Socialist Party minority government led by Prime Minister António Costa.