The Portuguese Autonomous Regions of Azores and Madeira held their own Regional Legislative election of 1996 on October 13. In the Azores, there were 52 seats in the Regional Parliament in dispute, one more than in the previous election, in 1992. The seats were distributed by the 9 islands of the archipelago proportionally to the population of each island. In Madeira, there were 59 seats in dispute, two more than in the previous election, distributed by the 11 municipalities of the archipelago proportionally to the population of each municipality. The Socialist Party won the election in Azores for the first time, gathering 45% of the voting and electing Carlos César to the presidency of the Regional Government, after 20 years of dominance by the Social Democratic Party. In Madeira, Alberto João Jardim, of the Social Democratic Party kept his dominance over the regional political panorama, winning the election with an absolute majority of 57%, the 6th consecutive absolute majority since the very first election in 1976. The election in Azores The winner of the election was the Socialist Party, that for the first time, achieved the majority of the voting, receiving, however, the same number of MPs as the Social Democratic Party. It was an historical victory for the socialists, after 20 years of dominance by the right-wing Social Democratic Party. Carlos Manuel Martins do Vale César became the new president of the Regional Government, succeeding to Alberto Romão Madruga da Costa. The Democratic Alliance of Azores lost its single MP and the People's Party, that did not participated in the last election, managed to elect 3 MPs after receiving more than 7% of the voting. On the left, the Unitary Democratic Coalition, led by the Portuguese Communist Party re-elected its MP, after winning the election in the island of Flores. The People's Democratic Union did not manage to elect a single MP. Summary of votes and seats |- ! rowspan="2" colspan=2 style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=left|Parties ! rowspan="2" style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|Votes ! rowspan="2" style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|% ! rowspan="2" style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|±pp swing ! colspan="5" style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align="center"|MPs ! rowspan="2" colspan=5 style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|MPs %/votes % |- style="background-color:#E9E9E9" ! align="center"|1992 ! align="center"|1996 ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|± ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|% ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=right|± |- | |51,906||45.82||9.4||21||24||3||46.15||5.0||1.01 |- | |46,449||41.00||12.6||28||24||4||46.15||8.7||1.13 |- | |8,346||7.37||—||1||3||2||5.77||3.8||0.78 |- | |3,940||3.48||1.2||1||1||0||1.92||0.1||0.55 |- |style="width: 10px" bgcolor=#E2062C align="center" | |align=left|People's Democratic Union |983||0.87||—||—||0||—||0.00||—||0.0 |- | |340||0.30||1.1||0||0||0||0.00||0.0||0.0 |- |colspan=2 align=left style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|Total valid |width="50" align="right" style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|111,964 |width="40" align="right" style="background-color:#E9E9E9"|98.83 |width="40"