Presidential elections were held in Portugal on 26 January 1986, with a second round on 16 February.
This was closest presidential election ever held in Portugal and was won by the Socialist Mário Soares, who initially had no more than 8 percent in opinion polls.
The first round was easily won by Freitas do Amaral, supported by all the right-wing parties. Soares advanced to the second round by beating the other two left-wing candidates: the former Prime-Minister Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, the first woman to be a candidate for the Portuguese presidency, and Salgado Zenha (supported by outgoing president António Ramalho Eanes, founder of the short-lived Democratic Renewal Party, and by the Portuguese Communist Party, whose candidate, ÃÂngelo Veloso, left the race some days before the poll). Both these candidates supported Soares in the second round.
In the first round, Soares did not achieve the majority of the votes in any district, as the left-wing strongholds in the south of Portugal voted for Zenha due to his support from the Communist Party.
As results for the second round were counted, the urban vote, traditionally more left-wing, overcame the early lead of Freitas do Amaral by fewer than 140,000 votes, and Soares was sworn in as president on 9 March 1986, the first civilian to hold the post (not counting caretakers) in 60 years.
For 40 years this would be the only time a direct Portuguese presidential election was decided in a runoff, until 2026.
Any Portuguese citizen over 35 years old has the opportunity to run for president. In order to do so it is necessary to gather between 7,500 and 15,000 signatures and submit them to the Portuguese Constitutional Court.
According to the Portuguese Constitution, a candidate needs a majority of votes to become elected. If no candidate gets this majority a second round will take place between the two most voted candidates.
There were also three candidates rejected by the Portuguese Constitutional Court for not complying with the legal requirements:
The 1986 presidential campaign was one of the most polarizing in Portugal's democratic history. The center-right/right-wing presented a unified candidate, Diogo Freitas do Amaral, while the center-left/left-wing was divided between three candidates: Soares, Salgado Zenha and Pintasilgo. Soares' unpopularity during his term as prime minister, between 1983 and 1985, when several austerity policies were inacted because of the IMF bailout leading to one of the worst social crises in Portuguese democracy, plus the long feud between Soares and the Portuguese Communist Party, created a deep divide on the left. Soares' candidacy was further damaged by divisions within the Socialist Party, with his longtime friend and party ally Francisco Salgado Zenha announcing his candidacy with the support of outgoing president António Ramalho Eanes, and later also with the support from the Communists. The tensions on the left side of the political spectrum reached a breaking point on 15 January 1986, when Soares was violently assaulted by Communist supporters in Marinha Grande, a moment that was seen as a turning point in favour of Soares.
On the first round, held on 26 January, Freitas and Soares advanced to a runoff. Soares' passage to the runoff created a dilemma for the Communist Party, taking into account the acrimonious relationship between both. Despite this background, the Communists decided to support Soares in the runoff, with party leader ÃÂlvaro Cunhal saying "if necessary, cover [Soares'] face on the ballot with one hand and vote with the other". Freitas' campaign used this support from the PCP to attack Soares, accusing him of contradicting himself by accepting the support of the Communists, while Soares accused Freitas of lack of political awareness before the 25 April 1974 revolution, pointing that Freitas "showed solidarity through silence" for the Estado Novo regime.