1986 Portuguese presidential election
Presidential elections were held in Portugal on 26 January 1986, with a second round on 16 February.
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| Turnout | 75.39% (first round) 9.00pp 77.99% (second round) | |||||||||||||||
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This was closest presidential election ever held in Portugal and was won by the Socialist Mário Soares, who initially had no more than 5% at opinion polls.
In first round was easily won by Freitas do Amaral, supported by all the right-wing parties, while Soares defeated the other two left-wing candidates, the former Prime-Minister Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo –the first woman to be a candidate to the Portuguese presidency – and Salgado Zenha (supported by outgoing president António Ramalho Eanes, founder of the short-lived Democratic Renewal Party, and by the Portuguese Communist Party, whose candidate, Ângelo Veloso, left the race some days before the poll). Both these candidates supported Soares in the second round.
Soares did not achieve the majority of the voting in any district, as the left-wing strongholds in the south of Portugal voted for Zenha due to his support by the Communist Party.
As results for the second round were counted, the urban vote, traditionally more left-wing, overcame the early lead of Freitas do Amaral by less than 140,000 votes, and Soares became president on 9 March 1986.
As of 2021, this was the only time a Portuguese presidential election was taken into a second round.