Governments do not require absolute majority support of the Assembly to hold office, as even if the number of opposers of government is larger than that of the supporters, the number of opposers still needs to be equal or greater than 116 (absolute majority) for both the Government's Programme to be rejected or for a motion of no confidence to be approved. The number of seats assigned to each district depends on the district magnitude. The use of the d'Hondt method makes for a higher effective threshold than certain other allocation methods such as the Hare quota or Sainte-Laguë method, which are more generous to small parties. For these elections, and compared with the 2002 elections, the MPs distributed by districts were the following: Parties The table below lists the parties represented in the Assembly of the Republic during the 9th legislature (2002–2005) and that also partook in the election: Campaign period Party slogans Candidates' debates Opinion polling National summary of votes and seats |- | colspan=11| |- ! rowspan=2 colspan=2 style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:left;" |Parties ! rowspan=2 style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" |Votes ! rowspan=2 style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" |% ! rowspan=2 style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" |± ! colspan="5" style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:center;" |MPs ! rowspan="2" style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" |MPs %/votes % |- style="background-color:#E9E9E9" ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:center;" |2002 ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:center;" |2005 ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" |± ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" |% ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" |± |- | |2,588,312||45.03||7.2||96||121||25||52.61||10.9||1.17 |- | |1,653,425||28.77||11.4||105||75||30||32.61||13.0||1.13 |- | |433,369||7.54||0.6||12||14||2||6.09||0.9||0.81 |- | |416,415||7.25||1.5||14||12||2||5.22||0.9||0.72 |- | |364,971||6.35||3.6||3||8||5||3.48||2.2||0.55 |- | |48,186||0.84||0.2||0||0||0||0.00||0.0||0.0 |- | |40,358||0.70||||||0||||0.00||||0.0 |- | |17,056||0.30||0.1||0||0||0||0.00||0.0||0.0 |- | |9,374||0.16||0.1||0||0||0||0.00||0.0||0.0 |- |style="width:10px;background-color:red;text-align:center;" | | style="text-align:left;" |Workers Party of Socialist Unity |5,535||0.10||0.0||0||0||0||0.00||0.0||0.0 |- | |1,618||0.03||||||0||||0.00||||0.0 |- |colspan=2 style="text-align:left;background-color:#E9E9E9"|Total valid |width="65" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"|5,578,782 |width="40" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"|97.06 |width="40" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"|1.0 |width="40" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"|230 |width="40" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"|230 |width="40" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"|0 |width="40" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"|100.00 |width="40" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"|0.0 |width="40" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"|— |- |colspan=2|Blank ballots |103,537||1.80||0.8||colspan=6 rowspan=4| |- |colspan=2|Invalid ballots |65,515||1.14||0.2 |- |colspan=2 style="text-align:left;background-color:#E9E9E9"|Total |width="65" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"|5,747,834 |width="40" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"|100.00 |width="40" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"| |- |colspan=2|Registered voters/turnout ||8,944,508||64.26||2.8 |- | colspan=11 style="text-align:left;" | Source: Comissão Nacional de Eleições |} Distribution by constituency |- class="unsortable" !rowspan=2|Constituency!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S!!%!!S !rowspan=2|TotalS |- class="unsortable" align="center" !colspan=2 | PS !colspan=2 | PSD !colspan=2 | CDU !colspan=2 | CDS-PP !colspan=2 | BE |- |align="left"| Azores | style="background:; color:white;"|53.1 | 3 | 34.4 | 2 | 1.7 | - | 4.0 | - | 2.9 | - | 5 |- |align="left"| Aveiro | style="background:; color:white;"|41.1 | 8 | 35.7 | 6 | 3.5 | - | 9.8 | 1 | 5.1 | - | 15 |- |align="left"| Beja | style="background:; color:white;"|51.0 | 2 | 12.3 | - | 24.1 |