Portuguese presidential election, 1996
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This article is part of the series:
Politics and government of
Portugal
The Portuguese presidential election of 1996 was held on 14 January.
Incumbent president Mário Soares was constitutionally barred from a third consecutive term. The Social Democrats were coming from a clear defeat in Portuguese legislative election, 1995, and their former leader, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, who had left the office of Prime Minister after ten years at the helm, lost by 400,000 votes to the Mayor of Lisbon, Jorge Sampaio.
The left other left-wing candidates, Jerónimo de Sousa and Alberto Matos, presented by the Portuguese Communist Party and the People's Democratic Union respectively, both left the race one week before the elections, announcing their support for Jorge Sampaio, as the victory of a left-wing candidate was in doubt. These parties had already supported Sampaio in a coalition that won the local elections in Lisbon. It would be the last time that People's Democratic Union presented a candidate, as two years later it merged with other small left-wing parties and formed the Left Bloc.
Cavaco Silva was supported by the two major right-wing parties, the Social Democratic Party and the People's Party, and once more, the right-wing parties did not manage to win the presidential election.
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