The 2023 Portuguese Socialist Party leadership election was held on 15 and 16 December 2023. The leadership ballot was called after Prime Minister and Socialist Party Secretary-General António Costa resigned from office on 7 November 2023. The winner of this election led the Socialist Party into the 2024 legislative election.
The declared candidates included the former Infrastructure and Housing Minister Pedro Nuno Santos, who represented the leftist faction of the party and wants to build upon the legacy of António Costa, Internal Administration Minister José LuÃÂs Carneiro, who represented the moderate faction and a continuation of Costism, and Daniel Adrião, a longtime critic of Costa as Secretary-General, who represented a rupture.
Even with the candidates claiming the contrary, this leadership election was viewed as another ideological dispute to decide what direction the party and the country should take, similar to the leadership elections of 2014 between Costa and António José Seguro, of 2004 between José Sócrates and Manuel Alegre and of 1992 between António Guterres and Jorge Sampaio.
With a turnout rate of around 70%, Pedro Nuno Santos was elected as the new Secretary-General of the Socialist Party with almost 61% of the votes, against the 37% of José LuÃÂs Carneiro. Daniel Adrião polled below 1%.
The Socialist Party (PS), led by then Prime Minister António Costa, won an absolute majority in the 2022 legislative election with 41 percent of the votes and 120 seats in the 230 seat Assembly of the Republic.
António Costa's third government was sworn in on 30 March 2022. This government proved to be unstable and experienced several scandals. By mid-2023, the government had seen the resignations of 11 secretaries of state and two ministers. The biggest scandal involved TAP Air Portugal and a compensation payment to a government member, Alexandra Reis. This case was followed by a violent incident, in late April 2023, at the Ministry of Infrastructure, between government staff members and an advisor to Minister João Galamba regarding an alleged stolen laptop. The deployment of the Portuguese Secret Services in this case stirred a clash between Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the incumbent president of Portugal, and Prime Minister António Costa concerning the future of Galamba and the government itself.
On 7 November 2023, the Public Security Police and the Public Prosecutor's office carried out a series of searches at the official residence of the Prime Minister and other ministries, leading to the arrest of the Prime Minister's chief of staff. Costa was named as a suspect in a corruption case involving the awarding of contracts for the lithium and hydrogen businesses, but denied any wrongdoing. He met President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa in the Presidential Palace and announced his resignation shortly after, stating that he would not run for re-election.
Following Costa's resignation the Socialist Party proposed a new cabinet led either by the President of the Assembly of the Republic, Augusto Santos Silva, the Governor of the Bank of Portugal, Mário Centeno, or by the former minister António Vitorino, that would last until the end of the government's term in 2026. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa however, after meeting with the Council of State, dissolved the assembly and called an early election for 10 March 2024.
The Prime Minister's resignation was not made official immediately; it was postponed until 8 December 2023, so that the State Budget for 2024 could be approved by parliament. It was the first time a single party majority government did not complete its full term in democratic Portugal.
José LuÃÂs Carneiro and Daniel Adrião proposed a series of debates between the candidates, but Pedro Nuno Santos refused to participate in any debate. Therefore, no debates between the candidates to the leadership were held.
All voters
PS voters
The following table shows a breakdown of the results of the election by party federation, which are mostly equal to the electoral circles.