1985 Portuguese legislative election

1985 Portuguese legislative election

← 1983 6 October 1985 1987 →
250 seats to the Portuguese Assembly 126 seats needed for a majority
Registered	7,818,981 6.6%
Turnout	5,798,929 (74.2%) 3.6 pp
First party Second party Third party   Leader Aníbal Cavaco Silva Almeida Santos Hermínio Martinho Party PSD PS PRD Leader since 2 June 1985 13 June 1985 (interim) 10 July 1985 Leader's seat Lisbon Porto Santarém Last election 75 seats, 27.2% 101 seats, 36.1% Did not contest Seats won 88 57 45 Seat change 13 44 45 Popular vote 1,732,288 1,204,321 1,038,893 Percentage 29.9% 20.8% 17.9% Swing 2.7 pp 15.3 pp New party   Fourth party Fifth party   Leader Álvaro Cunhal Francisco Lucas Pires Party PCP CDS Alliance APU Leader since 14 April 1978 20 February 1983 Leader's seat Lisbon Lisbon Last election 44 seats, 18.1% 30 seats, 12.6% Seats won 38 22 Seat change 6 8 Popular vote 898,281 577,580 Percentage 15.5% 10.0% Swing 2.6 pp 2.6 pp
Vote winner strength by district Results by constituency
Prime Minister before election Mário Soares PS Prime Minister after election Aníbal Cavaco Silva PSD

The 1985 Portuguese legislative election took place on 6 October. The election renewed all 250 members of the Assembly of the Republic.

In June of the same year, the then incumbent Prime Minister, Mário Soares, resigned from the job due to the lack of parliamentary support, the government was composed by a coalition of the two major parties, the center-right Social Democratic and the center-left Socialist, in what was called the Central Bloc, however this was an unstable balance of forces and several members of each party opposed such alliance.

The new leader of the Social Democratic Party, Cavaco Silva, elected in May, was among those that never supported such alliance, and short after being elected leader of the party made the coalition fall in July. Mário Soares didn't run again and resigned as party leader, as he decided to run for the 1986 Presidential elections. The PS nominated Almeida Santos, minister of state in Soares government, as intern leader and as the party candidate for Prime Minister.

A new election was called by the President and the Social Democrats won with a short majority and Cavaco became the Prime-Minister. The election was the first of three consecutive election victories for the Social Democratic Party. Meanwhile, a new party had been founded by supporters of the President Ramalho Eanes, the Democratic Renewal Party, led by Hermínio Martinho and which the main figure of the party's campaign was First lady Manuela Ramalho Eanes,^[1] that surprisingly gained 45 MPs and more than one million votes in the election, becoming the parliamentary support of the Cavaco's government until 1987, when it removed its support, making Cavaco fall.

The Communists and the Socialists lost votes and MPs, and the left would only return to the government ten years later, in 1995.