1995. Background Leadership changes CDS 1983 leadership election After the dissolution of the Democratic Alliance (AD), Diogo Freitas do Amaral resigned from the party's leadership, and a new congress to elect a new leader was called. Two candidates were on the ballot, Francisco Lucas Pires and Luís Barbosa, with Lucas Pires being elected as new party leader. |- style="background-color:#E9E9E9" ! align="center" colspan=2 style="width: 60px"|Candidate ! align="center" style="width: 50px"|Votes ! align="center" style="width: 50px"|% |- |bgcolor=| | align=left | Francisco Lucas Pires | align=center | WIN | align=right | |- |bgcolor=| | align=left | Luís Barbosa | align=center | | align=right | |- |- style="background-color:#E9E9E9" | colspan=2 style="text-align:left;" | Turnout | align=right | | align=center | |- | colspan="4" align=left|Source: |} PSD 1983 nomination selection Just like CDS, after the collapse of the AD coalition, the then PSD leader Francisco Pinto Balsemão announces he would not run for the leadership of the party. Shortly after, Carlos Mota Pinto is selected by the PSD as the party's candidate for Prime Minister. |- style="background-color:#E9E9E9" ! align="center" colspan=2 style="width: 60px"|Candidate ! align="center" style="width: 50px"|Votes ! align="center" style="width: 50px"|% |- |bgcolor=| | align=left | Carlos Mota Pinto | align=center | | align=right | 100.0 |- |- style="background-color:#E9E9E9" | colspan=2 style="text-align:left;" | Turnout | align=right | | align=center | |- | colspan="4" align=left|Source: |} Electoral system The Assembly of the Republic has 250 members elected to four-year terms. 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 126 (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 1980 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 2nd legislature (1980–1983) and that also contested the elections: Campaign period Party slogans Candidates' debates Opinion polling National summary of votes and seats |- | colspan=11| |- ! rowspan="2"