The 2009 European Parliament election in Portugal was the election of the delegation from

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

to the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...

held on 7 June 2009. The election was a huge setback for the

Socialist Party Socialist Party is the name of many different political parties around the world. All of these parties claim to uphold some form of socialism, though they may have very different interpretations of what "socialism" means. Statistically, most of t ...

(PS), which lost almost 18 percentage points. Basically all predictions that said that the PS would win comfortably the election, were wrong. As a result, the party also lost five of its twelve European Parliament members. The

Social Democrats Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote so ...

(PSD) were the big winners in these elections, surprising pundits and analysts who predicted a very complicated result for the PSD leader,

Manuela Ferreira Leite Maria Manuela Dias Ferreira Leite GCC GCIH (born Lisbon, 3 December 1940), commonly known as Manuela Ferreira Leite (), is a Portuguese economist, pundit and retired politician. Background She was born in Lisbon, Portugal. Manuela Ferreira Le ...

. The PSD won 31.7% of the vote and 8 seats. It was the first victory of the PSD, in European elections, since

1989 File:1989 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Cypress structure collapses as a result of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, killing motorists below; The proposal document for the World Wide Web is submitted; The Exxon Valdez oil tanker runs ...

. The People's Party (CDS-PP) also had a surprising result, winning 8% of the vote and electing two European Parliament members. Both PSD and CDS-PP, who ran in a joint list in 2004, increased sharply their scores and together they won more than 40% of the vote and 10 European Parliament members. On the left, both the Left Bloc (BE) and

Democratic Unity Coalition The Unitary Democratic Coalition ( pt, CDU – Coligação Democrática Unitária, PCP–PEV) is an electoral and political coalition between the Portuguese Communist Party ( pt, Partido Comunista Português or PCP) and the Ecologist Party "The Gr ...

(CDU) achieved very good results with the historic fact that BE surpassed CDU in term of votes and seats for the first time, although only just. Both parties increased their scores at the expense of the Socialist Party. The Left Bloc won 10.7% of the vote and three European Parliament members, their best score in EU elections to date, and CDU surpassed once again the 10% mark winning 10.6% of the vote, but maintaining the two European Parliament members they got in 2004. Turnout in the elections was quite low, as only 36.78% of the electorate cast a ballot, a slightly lower share than in the 2004 election. Although the number of ballots cast was higher than in 2004, the number of registered voters increased considerably in these elections, making the final turnout share lower than in 2004.

Electoral system

The voting method used, for the election of European members of parliament, is by proportional representation using the d'Hondt method, which is known to benefit leading parties. In the 2009 European Union elections, Portugal had 22 seats to be filled. Deputies are elected in a single constituency, corresponding to the entire national territory.

Parties and candidates

The lists were headed by *

(''Partido Socialista'', PS): Vital Moreira *

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties Fo ...

(''Partido Social Democrata'', PSD):

Paulo Rangel Paulo Artur dos Santos Castro de Campos Rangel (born 18 February 1968 in Vila Nova de Gaia) is a Portuguese jurist and politician of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) who has been serving as a Member of the European Parliament since 2009. He al ...

(''Coligação Democrática Unitária'', CDU):

Ilda Figueiredo Maria Ilda da Costa Figueiredo (born 30 October 1948 in Troviscal, Oliveira do Bairro) is a Portuguese politician and Member of the European Parliament for the Portuguese Communist Party, part of the European United Left - Nordic Green Left gro ...

* CDS – People's Party (''CDS – Partido Popular'', CDS–PP): Nuno Melo * Left Bloc (''Bloco de Esquerda'', BE): Miguel Portas * Portuguese Workers' Communist Party/Reorganized Movement of the Party of the Proletariat (''Partido Comunista dos Trabalhadores Portugueses / Movimento Reorganizativo do Partido do Proletariado'', PCTP/MRPP): Orlando Alves * Earth Party (''Partido da Terra'', MPT): Pedro Quartin Graça * Hope for Portugal Movement (''Movimento Esperança Portugal'', MEP): Laurinda Alves * People's Monarchist Party (''Partido Popular Monárquico'', PPM): Frederico Carvalho * Merit and Society Movement (''Movimento Mérito e Sociedade'', MMS): Carlos Gomes * National Renovator Party (''Partido Nacional Renovador'', PNR): Humberto Nuno de Oliveira * Humanist Party (''Partido Humanista'', PH): Manuela Magno * Workers Party of Socialist Unity (''Partido Operário de Unidade Socialista'', POUS): Carmelinda Pereira

Opinion polling and preliminary exit polls

Exit polls from the three major television networks in Portugal,

RTP1 RTP1 (''RTP um'') is a Portuguese free-to-air television channel owned and operated by state-owned public broadcaster Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP). It is the company's flagship television channel, and is known for broadcasting mainst ...

SIC The Latin adverb ''sic'' (; "thus", "just as"; in full: , "thus was it written") inserted after a quoted word or passage indicates that the quoted matter has been transcribed or translated exactly as found in the source text, complete with any e ...

and TVI were given precisely at 20:00 pm (local time) on 7 June 2009.

Results

, - ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:left;" colspan=2 , National party ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:left;" , European
party ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:left;" , Main candidate ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" , Votes ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" , % ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" , +/– ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" , Seats ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" , +/– , - style="text-align:right;" , style="background-color: " width=5px, , style="text-align:left;" ,

(PSD) , style="text-align:left;" , EPP , style="text-align:left;" ,

, 1,131,744 , 31.71 , ! 8 , 1 , - style="text-align:right;" , style="background-color: " width=5px, , style="text-align:left;" ,

(PS) , style="text-align:left;" , PES , style="text-align:left;" , Vital Moreira , 946,818 , 26.53 , 17.99 ! 7 , 5 , - style="text-align:right;" , style="background-color: " width=5px, , style="text-align:left;" , Left Bloc (BE) , style="text-align:left;" , EACL / PEL , style="text-align:left;" , Miguel Portas , 382,667 , 10.72 , 5.81 ! 3 , 2 , - style="text-align:right;" , style="background-color: " width=5px, , style="text-align:left;" , Democratic Unitarian Coalition (CDU)
•

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

(PCP)
• Ecologist Party (PEV) , style="text-align:left;vertical-align:top;" , GUE/NGL , style="text-align:left;vertical-align:top;" ,

, style="vertical-align:top;" , 379,787 , style="vertical-align:top;" , 10.64 , style="vertical-align:top;" , 1.55 ! 2
2
0 ,
0
0 , - style="text-align:right;" , style="background-color: " width=5px, , style="text-align:left;" , People's Party (CDS–PP) , style="text-align:left;" , EPP , style="text-align:left;" , Nuno Melo , 298,423 , 8.36 , ! 2 , 0 , - style="text-align:right;" , style="background-color: " width=5px, , style="text-align:left;" , Hope for Portugal Movement (MEP) , style="text-align:left;" , None , style="text-align:left;" , Laurinda Alves , 55,072 , 1.54 , ''new'' ! 0 , ''new'' , - style="text-align:right;" , style="background-color: " width=5px, , style="text-align:left;" , Workers' Communist Party (PCTP/MRPP) , style="text-align:left;" , None , style="text-align:left;" , Orlando Alves , 42,940 , 1.20 , 0.13 ! 0 , 0 , - style="text-align:right;" , style="background-color: " width=5px, , align="left", Earth Party (MPT) , align="left", ALDE , align="left", Pedro Quartin Graça , 24,062 , 0.67 , 0.27 ! 0 , 0 , - align="right" , style="background-color: " width=5px, , align="left", Merit and Society Movement (MMS) , align="left", None , align="left", Carlos Alberto Gomes , 21,738 , 0.61 , ''new'' ! 0 , ''new'' , - align="right" , style="background-color: " width=5px, , align="left", Humanist Party (PH) , align="left", None , align="left", Manuela Magno , 17,139 , 0.48 , 0.09 ! 0 , 0 , - align="right" , style="background-color: " width=5px, , align="left", People's Monarchist Party (PPM) , align="left", ECPM , align="left", Frederico Duarte Carvalho , 14,414 , 0.40 , 0.05 ! 0 , 0 , - align="right" , style="background-color: " width=5px, , align="left", National Renovator Party (P.N.R.) , align="left", None , align="left", Humberto Oliveira , 13,214 , 0.37 , 0.12 ! 0 , 0 , - align="right" , style="background-color: " width=5px, , align="left", Workers Party of Socialist Unity (POUS) , align="left", None , align="left", Carmelinda Pereira , 5,177 , 0.15 , 0.02 ! 0 , 0 , - align="right" , - style="background-color:#E9E9E9" , style="text-align:right;" colspan="4" , Valid votes , 3,333,195 , 93.39 , colspan="3" rowspan="2" , , - style="background-color:#E9E9E9" , style="text-align:right;" colspan="4" , Blank and invalid votes , 235,748 , 6.61 , - style="background-color:#E9E9E9" , style="text-align:right;" colspan="4" , Totals , 3,568,943 , 100.00 , — ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9" , 22 , 2 , - style="background-color:#E9E9E9" , colspan="4" , Electorate (eligible voters) and voter turnout , 9,704,559 , 36.78 , 1.82 , colspan="2", , - , style="text-align:left;" colspan="11" , Source
Comissão Nacional de Eleições
/small>

Distribution by European group

Maps

EuropeanElections 2009 Portugal.png, Most voted party by

district A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municipa ...

and

autonomous region An autonomous administrative division (also referred to as an autonomous area, entity, unit, region, subdivision, or territory) is a subnational administrative division or internal territory of a sovereign state that has a degree of autonomy� ...

. Europeias 2009 (Portugal).png, Strongest party by

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

Notes

References

External links

Eleição dos deputados ao Parlamento Europeu em 2009
fro
CNE – Comissão Nacional de Eleições
{{DEFAULTSORT:European Parliament Election, 2009 (Portugal)

European Parliament elections in Portugal 2009 elections in Portugal