Longtime leader Paulo Portas left the party's leadership after 20 years in December 2015. In March 2016, Assunção Cristas, Portas's chosen successor, was overwhelmingly elected leader of the party over Miguel Mattos Chaves. Cristas became the party's first female leader. However, the subsequent legislative elections were disastrous for the party. The CDS-PP lost 13 of their previous 18 seats, leaving them with only five, and took less than 5% of the vote as António Costa's Socialist government strengthened their position, but fell short of an absolute majority. Cristas resigned as CDS-PP as the election results became clear. 2022 general election A snap election was called for January 2022 after Costa's budget was rejected when the Left Bloc and Communists joined the right-wing parties in voting against it. The party was led by Francisco Rodrigues dos Santos, the leader of People's Youth, who narrowly won the 2020 leadership election. The election resulted in a surprise majority for Costa's Socialists after tightening polls, and the CDS-PP lost their five remaining seats on just 1.6% and for the first time since the restoration of democracy returned no members of the Assembly. The party received just 86,578 votes, less than half of their 2019 total. The CDS-PP's disastrous results were blamed partially on the rise of other right-wing parties, Liberal Initiative and Chega!, which both saw huge increases in support. Francisco Rodrigues dos Santos, then the president of the party, resigned on the very same night. In the following congress, he was replaced by CDS's single MEP, Nuno Melo. Ideology A large ideological overlap exists between the CDS-PP and the Social Democratic Party (PSD). The CDS-PP's original philosophy was based on Christian democracy, and it was originally positioned in the centre. A factional disagreement within the party between those that believed that the CDS-PP should be to the right of the PSD or in the political centre erupted. The party shifted in the early 1990s under the leadership of Manuel Monteiro. It still considers itself to be a centrist party. It has been also described as a national conservative party. The party formerly had a pro-EU line, but switched under Monteiro, becoming mildly Eurosceptic, including opposing the Maastricht Treaty, with this change of policy credited for ending the party's decline. As a result of the change, the European People's Party (EPP) expelled the CDS-PP from the EPP Group in the European parliament, with the