The PCP has lost more than 100 thousand votes in the Alentejo, compared with the first elections of the Assembly of the Republic in 1976, when it won nine seats in the region, and this Sunday’s legislative elections, in which it was left without deputies in the territory.
A year earlier, on 25 April 1975, in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the first free elections held in Portugal, Alentejo elected a total of 15 deputies.
At that time, the PS won nine votes (three from each constituency of Beja, Évora and Portalegre) and the PCP six (three from Beja, two from Évora and one from Portalegre).
In the 1976 elections, the first of the Assembly of the Republic, a “switch” occurred and the PCP overtook the PS in the number of deputies in the Alentejo, according to the official map of the National Electoral Commission (CNE), published in the Diário da Republica.
Of the 16 deputies in the region, the Communists then had nine (four from Beja and many others from Évora, in addition to one from Portalegre), and the PS had seven (three from Portalegre, two from Évora and two more from Beja). .
In this electoral act, the PCP received 52,839 votes for Beja (43.99%), 52,291 votes for Évora (43.15%), 21,135 votes for Portalegre (22%), that is, in the Alentejo overall it received 126,265 votes.
In Sunday’s legislative elections, the HDZ (PCP-PEV) received 11,570 votes for Beja (15.03%), 9,771 for Évora (10.93%) and 3,604 for Portalegre (5.94%), which, according to preliminary data showed 24,945 votes in Alentejo. published by the General Secretariat of the Ministry of the Interior (SGMAI).
The Alentejo elected a total of eight deputies: three from the PS and the same number from Chega, a “newcomer” in mandates in the region (one for each circle), and the remaining two from the Democratic Alliance (AD, a coalition that is part of the PSD, CDS- PP and PPM), one for Beja and the other for Evora.
Thus, the CDU lost the only deputy it still had in Alentejo, a former communist stronghold, when it failed to re-elect Joao Dias to the post of Beja (in Évora it lost its deputy in the 2022 elections, and in Portalegre it no longer had parliamentarians). in the 1991 vote).
This was the first time such a situation had occurred with the communists since April 25, 1974, or more precisely, since the constitutional elections were held the following year.
By comparison, between 1976 and 2024 the PCP lost 101,320 votes in all three Alentejo districts, with 42,520 in Évora, 41,269 in Beja and 17,531 in Portalegre.
In the 1976 legislative elections, according to the CNE, a total of 390,925 voters were registered in the three Alentejo districts, with a voting percentage of about 83.81% in Beja and 88.43% in Portalegre.
According to SGMAI, in this Sunday’s elections in Alentejo there were 342,608 registered voters and the votes ranged from 65.15% in Portalegre to 67.01% in Évora.
The PS won three Alentejo constituencies, with Chega the second most voted political force in Beja and Portalegre and AD in Évora.
Nationally, AD won 79 MPs in AR in Sunday’s legislative elections against 77 for PS (28.66%), followed by Chega with 48 elected MPs (18.06%).
IL with eight seats, BE with five and PAN with one, maintained the number of MPs. Livre went from one elected representative to four, and the CDU lost two seats and was left with four deputies.
The four seats for emigrants in the Assembly of the Republic, which the PS received in 2022 with three mandates, have not yet been determined.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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