Montenegro is the only candidate for the post of SDP leader

PSD President and Prime Minister Luis Montenegro is the only candidate for the leadership of the Social Democrats, something the party has not had since 2016, along with Pedro Passos Coelho.

A PSD source confirmed to Luce that before 3:00 pm this Monday, the deadline set by the National Council, only one candidacy for the post of President of the National Political Commission had been presented – that of the current leader and repeat candidate Luis Montenegro.

Direct elections – the 12th in the history of the SDP – are scheduled for September 6, and, according to the SDP website, almost 42 thousand members with valid quotas will be able to vote (the total number of active participants is more than 90 thousand).

This Monday, according to the schedule and regulations approved by the National Council, the proposal for a global strategy with which Luis Montenegro re-submits his bid for leadership should be announced.

The last time the PSD had a single candidate for leadership was in 2016, in its seventh direct election, the last in which Pedro Passos Coelho – already a former prime minister – was re-elected as the party’s president with over 95% of the vote.

Since then, the position of SDP President has always been a subject of dispute between two or more candidates.

In 2018, Rui Rio defeated Pedro Santana Lopez, and in 2020 he had to go through an unprecedented second round to defeat Luis Montenegro, while Miguel Pinto Luz was left in the first round.

Rio would again win the direct PSD leadership race in 2021 against then-MEP Paulo Rangel, by the narrowest margin in the history of the PSD’s internal elections: the two candidates were separated by just 1,746 votes, even smaller than the distance between Rio and Montenegro in 2020 (2,071).

In 2022, Rui Rio did not run again after his defeat in the legislative elections, and Luís Montenegro re-entered the race for the PSD presidency, running against former Social Democratic Vice President Jorge Moreira da Silva.

In these 11 direct elections, 26,984 out of 44,629 potential voters with valid quotas cast their ballots, and Montenegro won with over 72% of the votes.

Of the eleven direct elections that have already taken place in the PSD, only four have had a single candidate for the post of leader (the next will be the fifth): the first, which dedicated Marques Mendes by this method in 2006, and three re-elections, Pedro Passos Coelho.

Montenegro has been the President of the National Political Commission of the SDP since 28 May 2022 (later appointed by Congress in July of that year) and Prime Minister since 2 April 2024, following the victory of the AD coalition (with CDS-PP and PPM) in the early legislative elections on 10 March.