- Email: [email protected]
The Portuguese elections of 1987 and 1991 and the presidential election of 1991
Electoral Studies (1992), 11:2,
171-176
The Portuguese Elections of 1987 and 1991 and the Presidential Election of 1991 DAVIDB. GOLDEY* Lincoln College, Oxford OXI 3DR, Englclnd and the Western Societies Program, CorneEl Urziversity, Ithaca, NY 14853-7601, USA
Despite the revolutionary rhetoric of the earlier period, Portuguese politics since 1976 have been dominated by the competition between the centre-left Socialists (PS) and the centre-right Social Democrats (PSD) for the floating voter and, thus, political control.’ Since 1985, PSD leader, Anibal Cavaco Silva, has been successful in assuring that control for himself and his party in government and (unicameral) Parliament, while PS founder, MPrio Soares, has captured the centre ground to win the presidency without being able to help his party much. Power rests with the government, but the president may dissolve the Assembiy if the government is defeated there. In the 1985 Assembly, neither left nor right had a majority without the Party of Democratic Renewal (PRD), the vehicle of ex-president Antonio Ramalho Eanes (see Table l), which set out to humble Soares and his party. Competition between PRD and PS for leadership of the opposition in March 1987 brought about an ill-judged censure motion, tabled by the PRD and voted by the Communists (PCP) and with misgiv~gs by the PS. Since the PS, PRD and PCP were all electoral competitors, their possible coalition was inherently unstable. Its certain vicissitudes risked damaging President Soares’ re-election chances, for he intended in 1991 to appeal to the same floating centrist voters attracted to Prime Minister Cavaco Silva. Soares thus dissolved the Assembly in April and scheduled elections for 19 July 1987 (to coincide with the European elections) rather than calliig on PS leader, Vitor ConstPncio, to form a minority administration. The President-with other party leaders-underestimated Cavaco and his popularity; they also did not appreciate the enormous damage an incomprehensible parliamentary censure manoeuvre had done to the opposition amongst centrist and floating voters. For Cavaco had been preparing for the showdown: growth, rising employment, tax reductions and social security increases were all in place by the spring of 1987.2 The 1987 Campaign and Results The PS and PRD campaigns were disjointed, badly-organized and lacked plausible point. The PCP effort (disguised as CDU, with allies) was better organized and more *The author would like to thank the Lincoln College Research Fund for helping him to get to Portugal for elections and the Cornell Western Societies Program for its help and hospitality. 0261-3794/92/02/0171-06/$03.00
b 1992 Butterworth-Heinemann
172
The Portuguese
Elections of I987 and
1991
TABLE1. Party strength on the Assembly of the republic 1975-1991’
Party UDP PCP MDP (ID) Greens PS + allies PPD/PSD I Reformers CDS PPM PRD PSN Total seats
APu/ CDU
1975
1976
1979
1 30 5
4A
{”
116
107
74
81
73
16
42
( 73 5 45 5
AD
249
263
250
1980
13!
1983
i’;
1985
{ ‘4
66 8 I 82
94 7 76
56 1” 88
46 6
29
250
250
1987
(5
1991
{k!)
60
72
148
135
22
4
5
45
7
250
250
1 230
*Includes 4 deputies for emigrant constituencies. 1975, Constituent Assembly total excludes 1 Independent from Macau who did not sit. For explanation of initials see text and footnotes to Table 3. **PPM leader, Ribeiro Teles, elected in Lisbon on the PS list. imaginative, but the party was scleroticaly Stalinist and suffering from the general European communist malaise. Cavaco, with the help of a compliant state television, campaigned hard and effectively for a majority to assure continuing prosperity. Towards the end of the campaign, when polls showed he might hope for a majority for the PSD alone, he called for a victory for the PSD and said he would not serve without one. More popular than his party, he played his trump card effectively, leaving the Christian democratic CDS with little space on the right. For Cavaco could offer its electors and business backers the smack of firm government and the promise to amend away the socializing clauses of the 1976 Constitution. Under Portugal’s d’Hondt system, about 43 per cent of the vote is needed for a majority of Assembly seats. With 50 per cent of the vote, Cavaco had not only the first single-party majority in the Assembly, but in the country as well, (see Table 3, general election results 1975-91). The collapse of the PRD, the loss by the PCP of a fifth of its 1985 support and marginal gains by the PS left the Socialists again the major party of the left, but the PSD, with more than twice as many votes, the dominant party in the system.’ All parties paid their tribute to the PSD’s triumph. Cavaco took 70 per cent of the floating vote, and the lion’s share of new voters, attracted by the prospect of stable majority government and its putative benefits. The CDS lost 60 per cent of its 1985 vote, two-thirds to the PSD ‘for a majority’ (the CDS’s 1987 campaign slogan). The PPD lost three-quarters of its 1985 score, mostly to the PSD. Even the PCP lost some of its support directly to Cavaco, though more went to the PS and abstention; worse still, the losses were in the PCP Alentejo and urban industrial heartlands. PS gains on the left compensated for its losses to the PSD, but the PS, too, was flattened by the PSD steamroller. Presidential
and Party Strategies
The election marginalized the PRD and CDS; the PCP’s problems of internal dissent were compounded by electoral decline; the PS was left the only plausible
DAMDB. GOLDEY
173
alternative, but it would need two general elections to bring it to power againwith luck. Party fortunes might, however, be restored at different levels. The 1989 local elections re-established the PS’s extensive municipal base, and gave the party Port0 and Lisbon (the latter to the new PS leader, Jorge Sampaio); the PCP saw its support decline slightly and lost some municipal bastions and the PRD again failed entirely to set down local roots. But the CDS held on to local office in its northern redoubts where its national vote had been taken by the PSD. The PSD’s national triumph was not replicated at local level. It was clear that President Soares would run for re-election; that he was angling for the centre vote; and that he could not be beaten. The local results and a series of scandals (one involving the finance minister) somewhat tarnished the government’s image. Cavaco did not need the presidency so long as he kept his Assembly majority. To the disappointment of the right, he announced the PSD would not stand against Soares, and the party notionally supported his re-election. Soares’s move to the centre encouraged the PCP to run its own candidate, Carlos Carvalhas, the party’s second-in-command, as the candidate of the left. The UDP ran Carlos Marques in the hopes that a good score (2%) would increase its bargaining clout with the PCP for joint lists in the general election due nine months after the presidentials. The right of the CDS sought to profit from the PSD’s absence from the campaign by running Basilio Horta, a CDS founder, to revive the CDS and take some of the PSD’s right-wing support. The 1991 Presidential
Campaign
and Results
Soares, a natural campaigner, stomped the country, often with Sampaio; hoping the PS might benefit from the President’s personal popularity. Soares wanted at least 70 per cent of the vote, to reinforce his personal legitimacy, should the PS deprive the PSD of its Assembly majority in October 1991. The President’s pitch to the
TABLE2. Four presidential elections 1976-91 Extreme left
Other left 1980 1986 PRD
1976
Otelo 16.5
Pinheiro de Azevedo 14.4
1980
Otelo 1.5
1986 Lourdes (1) Pintasilgo 7.4 (2)
1991
r
PCP & Allies
PS St Allies
PSD
\
1.3
75.4
Soares Cameiro
1.1
84.2
Freitas do Amaral 46.3
1.1
75.6
Freitas 48.7
0.9
78.2
HOI-U
3.6
62.0
Eanes 61.5 \ r
40.3 I
Soares 25.4
Soares 51.3
Marques 2.6
Blank & Turnout spoiled (% register)
CDS
h
I
Pat0 7.6 I Eanes 56.4
,+. Zenha 20.9
(% of vote)
Carvalhas 12.9
Soares 70.4
*Adapted from Ex~resso, 8 December 1990 and 18 January 1991
14.1
174
The Portuguese
Elections
of 1987 and 1991
centre encouraged Carvalhas to greater moderation too, in the hopes of picking up some Socialist support; it pushed Horta to an increasingly aggressive right-wing campaign
to attract
Soares’s his votes electors.
succeeded: from
1987
He took
some
PCP support
Despite
Communists
but lost PS votes
for Carvalhas
number
level
could
of blank and spoiled
of presidential
higher proportion
abstention”
of Communists
PSD too) in the conservative northern
than the CDS in the
The October Only Cavaco secured
1991 General
had a clear
on the promise
notion
PS. The PRD was in terminal
1976,many
win (why
disabused
was reflected
in any presidential 2, presidential
contest
and
elections).
but the largest number Horta won back
A
of abstainers CDS electors
but he could not easily appeal in
PS and PSD competed:
he did less well
elections.
Election:
Strategies
to get what
prosperity
of the campaign decline.
half
areas and the left
in the election
Table
rural north.
of how
of continuing
not win. That set the terms
ballots
rural interior,
European
in urban
for the first time since
(see
littoral where
1987
his 70 per cent,
from PSD, PS and PRD
not conceivably
stayed home,
from the PSD in the conservative
the more developed there
he won
90 per cent
having their own candidate
abstained,
in the highest
(some
1991,
PSD supporters,
could safely vote for him). The lack of choice
a record came
on 19 January
coming
wing south. Socialists
CDS and PSD conservatives.
strategy
and Results
he wanted:
and the threat
a PSD majority
to retire
from the beginning
if he did
and boxed
The CDS ran as a Portuguese
in the
FDP, the neces-
sary coalition partner of left or right. But conservatives and centrists had no need of the CDS since they could vote directly for a PSD majority; the last thing most CDS voters wanted was a PS administration, even moderated PCP was further riven by dissent, for its stubborn Stalinism fall of Communist
regimes
in eastern
Europe
by CDS support. The could not survive the
and the USSR.
Polls now could not be published from two weeks before the election. By the end of September they all showed the PSD with the minimum 43 per cent necessary for a parliamentary majority, but none showed a popular one. As in 1987, the foal weeks of the campaign were crucial in swinging floating voters. A late poll (published sample
by the Dih-io de Noticias, 7 October
thought
Cavaco
would
win a majority;
1991)
showed
no significant
only a third of the number
thought
the
PS could even win a plurality. But 42 per cent believed a PSD majority would be preferable for the country (18% for the PS). Fully half of PS voters hoped for a PSD plurality,
14 per cent
even for a PSD majority!
Cavaco’s
majoritarian
logic and his
view of the national interest had been accepted by the electorate. That bi-polar inclination, and Sampaio’s careful campaign, help explain PS success in attracting a fifth of the 1987 Communist vote. The PRD was wiped out, dispersed mostly to abstention and the PSD. More striking was the loss of a third of the 1987 PCP and UDP vote. Again, the losses were greatest in Alentejo and industrial centres. But the PS could not cut into Cavaco’s majority, while the CDS vote hardly varied from 1987. The PSD and PS together took two-thirds of new young voters, split 2 to 1 for the PSD.i PRD collapse, PCP decline, CDS stagnation and an increase by a third in the PS share of the vote, all consolidated the restored bi-polarization of 1987. But the crucial contests were those of 1985 (which undid the PS) and of 1987 (which promoted the PSD); 1991 confirms the pattern previously established (for general election results 1975-91, see Table 3).
175
DAVID B. GOLDEY TABLE3. Eight general elections
1975-91 1976
1979
1980
1983
1985
1987
1991
0.8
1.7
2.1
1.3
1.1
1.3
1.2
i (1.1) 8.8
16.6 37.9
14.6 35.0
19.0 28.1
16.9 28.0
18.2 36.3
26.4
24.4 i
15.5 20.8 17.9 29.8
12.2 22.3 4.9 50.1
12.4 0.5
9.8
4.3 0.4
2.6 78.6 7.15
2.5 70.9 7.7
2.5 72.6 8.0
1975
Party UDP (PSR)’
CDU-PEV*
PCP/APU/CDU PS (+ allies) PRD PSD ) CDS PPM” PSN5 Blank & Spoiled % Turnout” Register (millions)
AD
(% of vote including blank and spoiled papers)
7.6 0.6
16.6 0.5
6.9 91.8 6.2
4.7 83.3 6.4
42.2
2.8 87.5 6.75
i
47.1
2.8 85.4 6.9
27.0
29.25 0.6 50.4 4.4 0.4 1.7 2.1 68.2 8.3
‘1987 and 1991 results from, Diario de Noticias, Anudrio 1988, and LIi&io de Noticks and P&&o, 7 October 1991. Figures are for metropolitan Portugal (continental Portugal, Madeira and the Azores) and exclude the two emigrant constituencies with 2 deputies each, one for Europe the other for the rest of the world. The two emigrant constituencies have very small registers, very high abstention rates (almost 75%) and may not vote in presidential elections. The 1975 election was for a Constituent Assembly. 1. The UDP (Popular Democratic Union) were anti-PCP Stalinists until their 1991 alliance. The PSR (Revolutionary Socialist Party) is a Trotskyite groupuscute which appears now to have inherited the extreme left anti-Communist vote, and just missed returning a deputy for Lisbon; the IJDP had one member, from Lisbon, in the first 4 Parliaments. In 1983 UDP and PSR ran joint lists in Lisbon, Port0 and Coimbra and these results with those of their separate lists elsewhere are given to the 1983 UDP. 2. The PCP and its satellites ran in alliance with the UDP under these initials in 1991. PEV (Ecologists Parry, The Greens), the ofBcia1 name of 0s Verdes, was added to the usual CDU label in a futile attempt to catch votes. 3. APU (United People’s Alliance) from 1979 through 1985 included the MDP and from 1983, the Greens. The MDP was an old opposition coalition converted to a Communist front in 1974. It stood independently in the Constituent Assembly elections of 1975 (4% included in the PCP vote in the table); did not stand in 1976, and from 1979 stood on PCP lists under the APU Iabel until 1987. In that year the MDP split over its continuing subservience to the party, and the ID faction which remained loyal to the PCP and the Greens reformed their alliance as the CDU; the newly independent MDP kept less than 1% of the vote. 4. The Popular Monarchists (programme: an elected Ring plus Soviets, local autonomy and protection of the environment) were a tiny formation who returned members thanks to the AD; its leader, Ribeiro Teles, was elected as an independent on a PS list in 1985, lost his seat in 1987 and retired from politics. The National Solidarity party appeals to pensioners. 2: Registers, maintained by local authorities are increasingly inaccurate and exaggerate abstention (see note 4, p. 176).
Portugal in making
has changed rapidly since 1974. Cavaco and Soares has each succeeded somewhat differing visions of modemization electorally profitabfe. EC
bounty has helped extend and cushion the consequences of development, and the PSD has taken full credit for political stability and rising standards of living, much as did the Gaullists in the first decade of the Fifth Republic. Groups by-passed by good times may protest, by voting PCP or PSN, or give up and abstain as has much
176
The Portuguese
Elections
of 1987 and 1991
of the traditional Communist clientele in France and now Portugal.6 But the transitional arrangements for Portugal’s entry in the EC will have run their course by the next general election, and difficult adjustments have still to be made in agriculture, industry (textiles, for example) and in bringing inflation down to the EC average. Privatization
alone will not solve these problems;
ing voters who have twice
brought
Cavaco
unless they are resolved
triumph
the float-
may desert him for a PS which
has to contend with PRD or a strong PCP on its flanks. But for the time being, Cavaco is triumphant; the PCP is torn by internal dissension and with diminished resources; the CDS is again without a leader or an agreed strategy, and may split; and PS notables are back to their favourite sport of trying to unseat their party leader, though that may mean risking the loss of Lisbon in the coming municipal elections. In politics, nothing succeeds like success.
no longer
Notes 1. For the electoral system and analyses of previous elections see my articles, ‘Elections and the Consolidation of Portuguese Democracy: 1974-1983’, Electoral Studies (1983) 2:3, pp. 229-40, and ‘The Portuguese General Election of 6 October 1985 and the Presidential Election of 26 January-16 February 1986’, Electoral Studies (1987), 6:1, pp. 53-62. 2. For Cavaco’s strategy 1985-7, see Marcel0 Rebel0 de Sousa, ‘Portugal: 19 July 1987’, Government and Opposition, (1987), 2214, pp. 444-451. The author is active in Lisbon PSD politics and journalism. 3. Results and analyses based on Expresso, 25 July 1987; Dihio de Noticias, 20 and 21 July 1987; and Diario de Noticias, Anuririo 1988. 4. The orders of magnitude are instructive but the exact figures may exaggerate abstention. The register, especially in the rural interior, does not accurately reflect removals-to urban centres, emigration or by death-and the over-count is cumulative. One study reckoned the proportion of ‘phantom electors’ nationally at 7%, ranging from some 11% in the interior to some 6% on the coast. The real level of abstention, then, in the 1991 presidentials may well have been closer to 31% than the official 38%, based on a plethoric register (see Expresso, 5 and 19 January 1991). The analysis of the results is based on Expresso, 19 January and Dihio de Noticias, 14 January 1991. 5. The analysis of the 1991 general election results is based on Expresso, 12 October 1991; Didrio de Noticias, 7 October 1991; Publico, 7 and 13 October 1991 and 0 jornal, 11 October 1991. 6. For regional differences by occupation and age, see Express0 5 January 1991; for vatiations in religious observance, Expresso, 9 March 1991 (diocesan and district boundaries do not always coincide); for an analysis of the election in terms of social change, see the article by Jorge Gaspar, 0 Jornal, 11 October 1991.
171-176
The Portuguese Elections of 1987 and 1991 and the Presidential Election of 1991 DAVIDB. GOLDEY* Lincoln College, Oxford OXI 3DR, Englclnd and the Western Societies Program, CorneEl Urziversity, Ithaca, NY 14853-7601, USA
Despite the revolutionary rhetoric of the earlier period, Portuguese politics since 1976 have been dominated by the competition between the centre-left Socialists (PS) and the centre-right Social Democrats (PSD) for the floating voter and, thus, political control.’ Since 1985, PSD leader, Anibal Cavaco Silva, has been successful in assuring that control for himself and his party in government and (unicameral) Parliament, while PS founder, MPrio Soares, has captured the centre ground to win the presidency without being able to help his party much. Power rests with the government, but the president may dissolve the Assembiy if the government is defeated there. In the 1985 Assembly, neither left nor right had a majority without the Party of Democratic Renewal (PRD), the vehicle of ex-president Antonio Ramalho Eanes (see Table l), which set out to humble Soares and his party. Competition between PRD and PS for leadership of the opposition in March 1987 brought about an ill-judged censure motion, tabled by the PRD and voted by the Communists (PCP) and with misgiv~gs by the PS. Since the PS, PRD and PCP were all electoral competitors, their possible coalition was inherently unstable. Its certain vicissitudes risked damaging President Soares’ re-election chances, for he intended in 1991 to appeal to the same floating centrist voters attracted to Prime Minister Cavaco Silva. Soares thus dissolved the Assembly in April and scheduled elections for 19 July 1987 (to coincide with the European elections) rather than calliig on PS leader, Vitor ConstPncio, to form a minority administration. The President-with other party leaders-underestimated Cavaco and his popularity; they also did not appreciate the enormous damage an incomprehensible parliamentary censure manoeuvre had done to the opposition amongst centrist and floating voters. For Cavaco had been preparing for the showdown: growth, rising employment, tax reductions and social security increases were all in place by the spring of 1987.2 The 1987 Campaign and Results The PS and PRD campaigns were disjointed, badly-organized and lacked plausible point. The PCP effort (disguised as CDU, with allies) was better organized and more *The author would like to thank the Lincoln College Research Fund for helping him to get to Portugal for elections and the Cornell Western Societies Program for its help and hospitality. 0261-3794/92/02/0171-06/$03.00
b 1992 Butterworth-Heinemann
172
The Portuguese
Elections of I987 and
1991
TABLE1. Party strength on the Assembly of the republic 1975-1991’
Party UDP PCP MDP (ID) Greens PS + allies PPD/PSD I Reformers CDS PPM PRD PSN Total seats
APu/ CDU
1975
1976
1979
1 30 5
4A
{”
116
107
74
81
73
16
42
( 73 5 45 5
AD
249
263
250
1980
13!
1983
i’;
1985
{ ‘4
66 8 I 82
94 7 76
56 1” 88
46 6
29
250
250
1987
(5
1991
{k!)
60
72
148
135
22
4
5
45
7
250
250
1 230
*Includes 4 deputies for emigrant constituencies. 1975, Constituent Assembly total excludes 1 Independent from Macau who did not sit. For explanation of initials see text and footnotes to Table 3. **PPM leader, Ribeiro Teles, elected in Lisbon on the PS list. imaginative, but the party was scleroticaly Stalinist and suffering from the general European communist malaise. Cavaco, with the help of a compliant state television, campaigned hard and effectively for a majority to assure continuing prosperity. Towards the end of the campaign, when polls showed he might hope for a majority for the PSD alone, he called for a victory for the PSD and said he would not serve without one. More popular than his party, he played his trump card effectively, leaving the Christian democratic CDS with little space on the right. For Cavaco could offer its electors and business backers the smack of firm government and the promise to amend away the socializing clauses of the 1976 Constitution. Under Portugal’s d’Hondt system, about 43 per cent of the vote is needed for a majority of Assembly seats. With 50 per cent of the vote, Cavaco had not only the first single-party majority in the Assembly, but in the country as well, (see Table 3, general election results 1975-91). The collapse of the PRD, the loss by the PCP of a fifth of its 1985 support and marginal gains by the PS left the Socialists again the major party of the left, but the PSD, with more than twice as many votes, the dominant party in the system.’ All parties paid their tribute to the PSD’s triumph. Cavaco took 70 per cent of the floating vote, and the lion’s share of new voters, attracted by the prospect of stable majority government and its putative benefits. The CDS lost 60 per cent of its 1985 vote, two-thirds to the PSD ‘for a majority’ (the CDS’s 1987 campaign slogan). The PPD lost three-quarters of its 1985 score, mostly to the PSD. Even the PCP lost some of its support directly to Cavaco, though more went to the PS and abstention; worse still, the losses were in the PCP Alentejo and urban industrial heartlands. PS gains on the left compensated for its losses to the PSD, but the PS, too, was flattened by the PSD steamroller. Presidential
and Party Strategies
The election marginalized the PRD and CDS; the PCP’s problems of internal dissent were compounded by electoral decline; the PS was left the only plausible
DAMDB. GOLDEY
173
alternative, but it would need two general elections to bring it to power againwith luck. Party fortunes might, however, be restored at different levels. The 1989 local elections re-established the PS’s extensive municipal base, and gave the party Port0 and Lisbon (the latter to the new PS leader, Jorge Sampaio); the PCP saw its support decline slightly and lost some municipal bastions and the PRD again failed entirely to set down local roots. But the CDS held on to local office in its northern redoubts where its national vote had been taken by the PSD. The PSD’s national triumph was not replicated at local level. It was clear that President Soares would run for re-election; that he was angling for the centre vote; and that he could not be beaten. The local results and a series of scandals (one involving the finance minister) somewhat tarnished the government’s image. Cavaco did not need the presidency so long as he kept his Assembly majority. To the disappointment of the right, he announced the PSD would not stand against Soares, and the party notionally supported his re-election. Soares’s move to the centre encouraged the PCP to run its own candidate, Carlos Carvalhas, the party’s second-in-command, as the candidate of the left. The UDP ran Carlos Marques in the hopes that a good score (2%) would increase its bargaining clout with the PCP for joint lists in the general election due nine months after the presidentials. The right of the CDS sought to profit from the PSD’s absence from the campaign by running Basilio Horta, a CDS founder, to revive the CDS and take some of the PSD’s right-wing support. The 1991 Presidential
Campaign
and Results
Soares, a natural campaigner, stomped the country, often with Sampaio; hoping the PS might benefit from the President’s personal popularity. Soares wanted at least 70 per cent of the vote, to reinforce his personal legitimacy, should the PS deprive the PSD of its Assembly majority in October 1991. The President’s pitch to the
TABLE2. Four presidential elections 1976-91 Extreme left
Other left 1980 1986 PRD
1976
Otelo 16.5
Pinheiro de Azevedo 14.4
1980
Otelo 1.5
1986 Lourdes (1) Pintasilgo 7.4 (2)
1991
r
PCP & Allies
PS St Allies
PSD
\
1.3
75.4
Soares Cameiro
1.1
84.2
Freitas do Amaral 46.3
1.1
75.6
Freitas 48.7
0.9
78.2
HOI-U
3.6
62.0
Eanes 61.5 \ r
40.3 I
Soares 25.4
Soares 51.3
Marques 2.6
Blank & Turnout spoiled (% register)
CDS
h
I
Pat0 7.6 I Eanes 56.4
,+. Zenha 20.9
(% of vote)
Carvalhas 12.9
Soares 70.4
*Adapted from Ex~resso, 8 December 1990 and 18 January 1991
14.1
174
The Portuguese
Elections
of 1987 and 1991
centre encouraged Carvalhas to greater moderation too, in the hopes of picking up some Socialist support; it pushed Horta to an increasingly aggressive right-wing campaign
to attract
Soares’s his votes electors.
succeeded: from
1987
He took
some
PCP support
Despite
Communists
but lost PS votes
for Carvalhas
number
level
could
of blank and spoiled
of presidential
higher proportion
abstention”
of Communists
PSD too) in the conservative northern
than the CDS in the
The October Only Cavaco secured
1991 General
had a clear
on the promise
notion
PS. The PRD was in terminal
1976,many
win (why
disabused
was reflected
in any presidential 2, presidential
contest
and
elections).
but the largest number Horta won back
A
of abstainers CDS electors
but he could not easily appeal in
PS and PSD competed:
he did less well
elections.
Election:
Strategies
to get what
prosperity
of the campaign decline.
half
areas and the left
in the election
Table
rural north.
of how
of continuing
not win. That set the terms
ballots
rural interior,
European
in urban
for the first time since
(see
littoral where
1987
his 70 per cent,
from PSD, PS and PRD
not conceivably
stayed home,
from the PSD in the conservative
the more developed there
he won
90 per cent
having their own candidate
abstained,
in the highest
(some
1991,
PSD supporters,
could safely vote for him). The lack of choice
a record came
on 19 January
coming
wing south. Socialists
CDS and PSD conservatives.
strategy
and Results
he wanted:
and the threat
a PSD majority
to retire
from the beginning
if he did
and boxed
The CDS ran as a Portuguese
in the
FDP, the neces-
sary coalition partner of left or right. But conservatives and centrists had no need of the CDS since they could vote directly for a PSD majority; the last thing most CDS voters wanted was a PS administration, even moderated PCP was further riven by dissent, for its stubborn Stalinism fall of Communist
regimes
in eastern
Europe
by CDS support. The could not survive the
and the USSR.
Polls now could not be published from two weeks before the election. By the end of September they all showed the PSD with the minimum 43 per cent necessary for a parliamentary majority, but none showed a popular one. As in 1987, the foal weeks of the campaign were crucial in swinging floating voters. A late poll (published sample
by the Dih-io de Noticias, 7 October
thought
Cavaco
would
win a majority;
1991)
showed
no significant
only a third of the number
thought
the
PS could even win a plurality. But 42 per cent believed a PSD majority would be preferable for the country (18% for the PS). Fully half of PS voters hoped for a PSD plurality,
14 per cent
even for a PSD majority!
Cavaco’s
majoritarian
logic and his
view of the national interest had been accepted by the electorate. That bi-polar inclination, and Sampaio’s careful campaign, help explain PS success in attracting a fifth of the 1987 Communist vote. The PRD was wiped out, dispersed mostly to abstention and the PSD. More striking was the loss of a third of the 1987 PCP and UDP vote. Again, the losses were greatest in Alentejo and industrial centres. But the PS could not cut into Cavaco’s majority, while the CDS vote hardly varied from 1987. The PSD and PS together took two-thirds of new young voters, split 2 to 1 for the PSD.i PRD collapse, PCP decline, CDS stagnation and an increase by a third in the PS share of the vote, all consolidated the restored bi-polarization of 1987. But the crucial contests were those of 1985 (which undid the PS) and of 1987 (which promoted the PSD); 1991 confirms the pattern previously established (for general election results 1975-91, see Table 3).
175
DAVID B. GOLDEY TABLE3. Eight general elections
1975-91 1976
1979
1980
1983
1985
1987
1991
0.8
1.7
2.1
1.3
1.1
1.3
1.2
i (1.1) 8.8
16.6 37.9
14.6 35.0
19.0 28.1
16.9 28.0
18.2 36.3
26.4
24.4 i
15.5 20.8 17.9 29.8
12.2 22.3 4.9 50.1
12.4 0.5
9.8
4.3 0.4
2.6 78.6 7.15
2.5 70.9 7.7
2.5 72.6 8.0
1975
Party UDP (PSR)’
CDU-PEV*
PCP/APU/CDU PS (+ allies) PRD PSD ) CDS PPM” PSN5 Blank & Spoiled % Turnout” Register (millions)
AD
(% of vote including blank and spoiled papers)
7.6 0.6
16.6 0.5
6.9 91.8 6.2
4.7 83.3 6.4
42.2
2.8 87.5 6.75
i
47.1
2.8 85.4 6.9
27.0
29.25 0.6 50.4 4.4 0.4 1.7 2.1 68.2 8.3
‘1987 and 1991 results from, Diario de Noticias, Anudrio 1988, and LIi&io de Noticks and P&&o, 7 October 1991. Figures are for metropolitan Portugal (continental Portugal, Madeira and the Azores) and exclude the two emigrant constituencies with 2 deputies each, one for Europe the other for the rest of the world. The two emigrant constituencies have very small registers, very high abstention rates (almost 75%) and may not vote in presidential elections. The 1975 election was for a Constituent Assembly. 1. The UDP (Popular Democratic Union) were anti-PCP Stalinists until their 1991 alliance. The PSR (Revolutionary Socialist Party) is a Trotskyite groupuscute which appears now to have inherited the extreme left anti-Communist vote, and just missed returning a deputy for Lisbon; the IJDP had one member, from Lisbon, in the first 4 Parliaments. In 1983 UDP and PSR ran joint lists in Lisbon, Port0 and Coimbra and these results with those of their separate lists elsewhere are given to the 1983 UDP. 2. The PCP and its satellites ran in alliance with the UDP under these initials in 1991. PEV (Ecologists Parry, The Greens), the ofBcia1 name of 0s Verdes, was added to the usual CDU label in a futile attempt to catch votes. 3. APU (United People’s Alliance) from 1979 through 1985 included the MDP and from 1983, the Greens. The MDP was an old opposition coalition converted to a Communist front in 1974. It stood independently in the Constituent Assembly elections of 1975 (4% included in the PCP vote in the table); did not stand in 1976, and from 1979 stood on PCP lists under the APU Iabel until 1987. In that year the MDP split over its continuing subservience to the party, and the ID faction which remained loyal to the PCP and the Greens reformed their alliance as the CDU; the newly independent MDP kept less than 1% of the vote. 4. The Popular Monarchists (programme: an elected Ring plus Soviets, local autonomy and protection of the environment) were a tiny formation who returned members thanks to the AD; its leader, Ribeiro Teles, was elected as an independent on a PS list in 1985, lost his seat in 1987 and retired from politics. The National Solidarity party appeals to pensioners. 2: Registers, maintained by local authorities are increasingly inaccurate and exaggerate abstention (see note 4, p. 176).
Portugal in making
has changed rapidly since 1974. Cavaco and Soares has each succeeded somewhat differing visions of modemization electorally profitabfe. EC
bounty has helped extend and cushion the consequences of development, and the PSD has taken full credit for political stability and rising standards of living, much as did the Gaullists in the first decade of the Fifth Republic. Groups by-passed by good times may protest, by voting PCP or PSN, or give up and abstain as has much
176
The Portuguese
Elections
of 1987 and 1991
of the traditional Communist clientele in France and now Portugal.6 But the transitional arrangements for Portugal’s entry in the EC will have run their course by the next general election, and difficult adjustments have still to be made in agriculture, industry (textiles, for example) and in bringing inflation down to the EC average. Privatization
alone will not solve these problems;
ing voters who have twice
brought
Cavaco
unless they are resolved
triumph
the float-
may desert him for a PS which
has to contend with PRD or a strong PCP on its flanks. But for the time being, Cavaco is triumphant; the PCP is torn by internal dissension and with diminished resources; the CDS is again without a leader or an agreed strategy, and may split; and PS notables are back to their favourite sport of trying to unseat their party leader, though that may mean risking the loss of Lisbon in the coming municipal elections. In politics, nothing succeeds like success.
no longer
Notes 1. For the electoral system and analyses of previous elections see my articles, ‘Elections and the Consolidation of Portuguese Democracy: 1974-1983’, Electoral Studies (1983) 2:3, pp. 229-40, and ‘The Portuguese General Election of 6 October 1985 and the Presidential Election of 26 January-16 February 1986’, Electoral Studies (1987), 6:1, pp. 53-62. 2. For Cavaco’s strategy 1985-7, see Marcel0 Rebel0 de Sousa, ‘Portugal: 19 July 1987’, Government and Opposition, (1987), 2214, pp. 444-451. The author is active in Lisbon PSD politics and journalism. 3. Results and analyses based on Expresso, 25 July 1987; Dihio de Noticias, 20 and 21 July 1987; and Diario de Noticias, Anuririo 1988. 4. The orders of magnitude are instructive but the exact figures may exaggerate abstention. The register, especially in the rural interior, does not accurately reflect removals-to urban centres, emigration or by death-and the over-count is cumulative. One study reckoned the proportion of ‘phantom electors’ nationally at 7%, ranging from some 11% in the interior to some 6% on the coast. The real level of abstention, then, in the 1991 presidentials may well have been closer to 31% than the official 38%, based on a plethoric register (see Expresso, 5 and 19 January 1991). The analysis of the results is based on Expresso, 19 January and Dihio de Noticias, 14 January 1991. 5. The analysis of the 1991 general election results is based on Expresso, 12 October 1991; Didrio de Noticias, 7 October 1991; Publico, 7 and 13 October 1991 and 0 jornal, 11 October 1991. 6. For regional differences by occupation and age, see Express0 5 January 1991; for vatiations in religious observance, Expresso, 9 March 1991 (diocesan and district boundaries do not always coincide); for an analysis of the election in terms of social change, see the article by Jorge Gaspar, 0 Jornal, 11 October 1991.