Portuguese presidential election, 2001

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14 January 2001

2006 →

Turnout

49.71%


Candidate	Jorge Sampaio	Ferreira do Amaral	António Simões de Abreu
Party	Independent	PSD	CDU
Alliance	PS
Popular vote	2,401,015	1,498,948	223,196
Percentage	55.6%	34.7%	5.2%


Candidate	Fernando Rosas	António Garcia Pereira
Party	BE	PCTP/MRPP
Popular vote	129,840	68,900
Percentage	3.0%	1.6%

President before election

Jorge Sampaio
PS

Elected President

Jorge Sampaio
PS

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

Jorge Sampaio
PS

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

The Portuguese presidential election of 2001 was held on 14 January.

The victory of incumbent president Jorge Sampaio was never in doubt and the turnout was therefore quite low (49.71%). Again, the incumbent president was reelected, like what happened with Mário Soares and Ramalho Eanes.

As the re-election of the left-wing president was almost certain, both the Portuguese Communist Party and the Left Bloc, the latter for its first time, presented their own candidates, as their support against the right-wing candidate was not necessary. The Communist Party of the Portuguese Workers also presented its own candidate for the first time in its history, Garcia Pereira.

On the right, Ferreira do Amaral was supported by the two major parties, the Social Democratic Party and the People's Party which, again, could not achieve their old objective of electing a right-wing president for the first time since the Carnation Revolution.

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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