The 1979 Portuguese legislative election took place on 2 December. The election renewed all 250 members of the Assembly of the Republic, 13 seats less than those elected in 1976.

Quick Facts 250 seats to the Portuguese Assembly 125 seats needed for a majority, Registered ...

1979 Portuguese legislative election

← 1976 2 December 1979 1980 →
250 seats to the Portuguese Assembly 125 seats needed for a majority
Registered	7,249,346 10.4%
Turnout	6,007,453 (82.9%) 0.6 pp
First party Second party Third party   Leader Francisco Sá Carneiro Mário Soares Álvaro Cunhal Party PSD PS PCP Alliance AD APU Leader since 2 July 1978[lower-alpha 1] 19 April 1973 14 April 1978 Leader's seat Lisbon[1] Lisbon[2] Lisbon Last election 115 seats, 40.9%[lower-alpha 2] 107 seats, 34.9% 40 seats, 14.4% Seats before 110† 105† 34† Seats won 128 74 47 Seat change 18* 31* 13* Popular vote 2,719,208 1,642,136 1,129,322 Percentage 45.3% 27.3% 18.8% Swing 4.4 pp 7.6 pp 4.4 pp
Vote winner strength by district Results by constituency. * Indicates seat change, so this is a nominal figure. † Notional 1976 results with the new seat distribution.
Prime Minister before election Maria de Lurdes Pintasilgo PS Prime Minister after election Francisco Sá Carneiro PSD

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The 3 years prior to the election were very unstable with Prime Minister Mário Soares' government collapsing in August 1978 and being succeeded by three Presidential appointed governments, in which the first two also collapsed due to lack of Parliamentary support. In the summer of 1979, President of Portugal António Ramalho Eanes dissolved Parliament and called an election for 2 December 1979 and, until the elections, the President nominated Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, the first and still only woman to lead a government in Portugal, as Prime Minister.

In the elections, the right-wing parties, the Social Democratic Party, the Democratic and Social Center and the People's Monarchist Party united in the Democratic Alliance (Portuguese: Aliança Democrática or AD) under the leadership of Sá Carneiro won the election, receiving 45% of the votes and an absolute majority in seats. The Socialists lost more than 30 MPs and the Communists, now allied with the Portuguese Democratic Movement in the United People Alliance achieved their highest total ever, with almost 20% of the voting.

Turnout dropped slightly to 82.6%, but the number of ballots cast surpassed 6 million.

The Assembly of the Republic has 250 members elected to four-year terms. The total number of MPs was reduced to 250 from the previous 263, elected in 1976. 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 126 (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 1976 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following:^[11]

The table below lists the parties represented in the Assembly of the Republic during the first half of the 1st legislature (1976–1980), as this election was a national by-election, and that also contested the elections: