The 1980 Portuguese legislative election took place on 5 October. The election renewed all 250 members of the Assembly of the Republic.

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

1980 Portuguese legislative election

← 1979 5 October 1980 1983 →
250 seats to the Portuguese Assembly 125 seats needed for a majority
Registered	7,179,023 1.0%
Turnout	6,026,395 (83.9%) 1.0 pp
First party Second party Third party   Leader Francisco Sá Carneiro Mário Soares Álvaro Cunhal Party PSD PS PCP Alliance AD FRS APU Leader since 2 July 1978[lower-alpha 1] 19 April 1973[lower-alpha 2] 14 April 1978 Leader's seat Lisbon[1] Lisbon[2] Lisbon Last election 128 seats, 45.3% 74 seats, 27.3%[lower-alpha 3] 47 seats, 18.8% Seats won 134 74 41 Seat change 6 0 6 Popular vote 2,868,076 1,673,279 1,009,505 Percentage 47.6% 27.8% 16.8% Swing 2.3 pp 0.5 pp 2.0 pp
Vote winner strength by district PSD ran alone in the Azores and Madeira. PS ran alone in the Azores, Madeira, Europe and Rest of the World. Results by constituency
Prime Minister before election Francisco Sá Carneiro PSD Prime Minister after election Francisco Sá Carneiro PSD

Close

In January 1980, the Democratic Alliance, which had won the previous election, on 2 December 1979, entered office with Francisco Sá Carneiro leading the government. However, this election was an extraordinary election and because of Fixed-term Parliament rules, in 1980, another election was held.

The Democratic Alliance (AD) won, again, and increased the majority they had achieved 10 months before, in December 1979. The AD won almost 48% of the votes and gathered 134 seats, six more.^[3] The Socialist Party (PS), now leading a broad coalition called Republican and Socialist Front, got basically the same vote share and seats as in 1979. The Communist led alliance, United People Alliance (APU) lost some ground, gathering almost 17% of the votes, 2% lower than 10 months earlier.

Turnout was one of the highest ever, almost 84%, and in terms of ballots cast, the more than 6 million votes cast was a record in Portuguese elections for 44 years after being surpassed in the 2024 legislative election.

The Assembly of the Republic has 250 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 126 (absolute majority) for both the Government's Programme to be rejected or for a motion of no confidence to be approved.^[4]

The number of seats assigned to each district depends on the district magnitude.^[5] 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.^[6]

For these elections, and compared with the 1979 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following:^[7]

More information District, Number of MPs ...

District	Number of MPs	Map
Lisbon	56	15 6 38 6 4 15 10 5 12 6 11 12 56 4 5 17 5 9 5 5 2 2
Porto	38
Setúbal	17
Aveiro and Braga	15
Santarém and Coimbra	12
Leiria	11
Viseu	10
Faro	9
Castelo Branco, Viana do Castelo and Vila Real	6
Azores, Beja, Évora, Guarda and Madeira	5
Bragança and Portalegre	4
Europe and Outside Europe	2

Close

The table below lists the parties represented in the Assembly of the Republic during the second half of the 1st legislature (1976–1980), as the 1979 election was a national by-election, and that also contested the elections: