Portuguese presidential election, 1991

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13 January 1991

1996 →

Turnout

62,16%


Candidate	Mário Soares	Basílio Horta
Party	Independent	CDS
Alliance	PS
Popular vote	3,459,521	696,379
Percentage	70.4%	14.2%

President before election

Soares
PS

Elected President

Soares
PS

Portugal
This article is part of the series: Politics and government of Portugal

Soares
PS

This article is part of the series:
Politics and government of
Portugal

The Portuguese presidential election of 1991 was held on 13 January.

The re-election of the hugely popular Mário Soares was never in doubt, specially after the then-ruling PSD, led by Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva announced its support. Therefore, the election held on 13 January 1991 was a landslide, and no second round was needed.

As the election of a left-wing candidate was assured, other left-wing parties, the Portuguese Communist Party and the People's Democratic Union, presented their own candidates. The communists presented Carlos Carvalhas, who had been Assistant General Secretary of the Party a year before (Álvaro Cunhal was the secretary-general). Carvalhas would later be elected secretary-general, in 1992.

On the right, as the Social Democratic Party supported Soares, the Democratic and Social Centre presented the only right-wing candidate, Basílio Horta.

Mário Soares achieved the majority of the votes in every district of the country, and 302 of the then 305 municipalities. His score was the biggest ever in a presidential election in Portugal.

Any Portuguese citizen over 35 years old has the opportunity to run for president. In order to do so it is necessary to gather between 7500 and 15000 signatures and submit them to the Portuguese Constitutional Court.

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Wikipedia