1999 Portuguese legislative election
The 1999 Portuguese legislative election took place on 10 October. The election renewed all 230 members of the Assembly of the Republic. The Socialist Party was aiming a second term under the lead of António Guterres, incumbent Prime Minister, as a good economy and Portugal's growing prestige, following the Expo 1998 and the support for the East-Timor cause, were strengthening the PS position. Polls leading up to the election predicted a comfortable PS majority government. Adding to this, the main opposition party, the Social Democratic Party (PSD), was exiting an internal crisis after former  leader Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa resigned in March 1999 amid disagreaments with the CDS-People's Party leader, Paulo Portas, regarding a future PSD/CDS alliance for these elections. The party elected, in a snap party congress in May 1999, José Manuel Durão Barroso as new leader. Despite opinion polls predictions, the election results were labeled as a disappointment for the Socialists as the party failed to win a historical absolute majority by just one MP and barely improved their 1995 score, just 0.3%. The disappointing PS score would create instability in Guterres second government in the years to follow . The Social Democratic Party was still away from the preferences of the majority of the Portuguese people, after the ten years cycle under the lead of Cavaco Silva that had terminated four years before, and lost 7 MPs, compared with 1995, and gathered 32% of the votes. The Democratic Unity Coalition achieved an important climb in the scorecard, against those who predicted its irreversible decline after the end of the Socialist Bloc in the early 1990s. The CDS-People's Party was able to hold on to its 15 MPs after tensions with the PSD earlier that year. For the  first time, the Left Bloc, formed after the merger of several minor left-wing parties became represented in the parliament after electing two MPs. Turnout in this election was very low, only being surpassed in 2009 and 2011 when turnout was just less than 60%. Overall, voter turnout reached only 61% of voters, one of the lowest ever recorded. 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. The number of seats assigned to each district depends on the district magnitude. 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. For these elections, and compared with the 1995 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following : Parties. The table below lists the parties represented in the Assembly of the Republic during the 7th legislature (1995-1999) and that also partook in the election: Opinion polling. The following table shows the opinion polls of voting intention of the Portuguese voters before the election. Those parties that are listed were represented in parliament (1995-1999). Included is also the result of the Portuguese general elections in 1995 and 1999 for reference. Note, until 2000, the publication of opinion polls in the last week of the campaign was forbidden. National summary of votes and seats. !|Parties !|Votes !|% !|±  !|MPs ! |MPs %/votes % ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-|1995 ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-|1999 !|± !|% !|± Distribution by constituency. !|Constituency!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S !|TotalS ! | PS ! | PSD ! | CDU ! | CDS–PP ! | BE