Politics of Portugal

The President of Portugal has the power to dissolve the Assembly of the Republic by his/her 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 can 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, or dissolve Parliament and call new elections.

Date

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 to all of 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 during an ongoing legislature (dissolution of parliament) it must be held at least after 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, take place no later than 8 October 2028.^[7]

Leadership changes and challenges

Electoral system

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.^[10]

The number of seats assigned to each district depends on the district magnitude.^[11] 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.^[12]

The distribution of MPs by electoral district for the 2024 legislative election was the following:^[13]

More information District, Number of MPs ...

District	Number of MPs	Map
Lisbon	48
Porto	40
Braga and Setúbal	19
Aveiro	16
Leiria	10
Coimbra, Faro and Santarém	9
Viseu	8
Madeira	6
Azores, Viana do Castelo and Vila Real	5
Castelo Branco	4
Beja, Bragança, Évora and Guarda	3
Portalegre, Europe and Outside Europe	2

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