The 2002 Portuguese legislative election took place on 17 March. The election renewed all 230 members of the Assembly of the Republic.
These elections were called after the resignation of the then incumbent Prime Minister, António Guterres after the defeat of the Socialist Party in the 2001 local elections. That fact, plus the problematic state of the country's finances were the main arguments of the right-wing parties, which led them to be the favourites to win the election.
With just over 40% of the votes cast, the Social Democrats regained the status as the largest political force in Portugal, although the Socialists won almost 38% of the vote. This was, and still is, the smallest difference between the two major parties in Portugal. This short distance also appears on the electoral map, with each party winning eleven of the 22 districts, while the PS won the most populous, Lisbon and Porto. As a result, the Social Democrats fail to win the absolute majority they had between 1987 and 1995.
As no Party got an absolute majority, the Social Democrats formed a coalition with the right-wing People's Party. The left-wing Democratic Unity Coalition achieved the lowest result ever, finishing in the third place in its traditional strongholds, Évora and Setúbal. The Left Bloc gained one MP. Turnout was slightly higher than it was in 1999 but remained quite low, marking a growing separation between the politics and the Portuguese people, mainly due to the image of the politicians as corrupts and the idea that all the parties are the same.
Voter turnout was slightly higher than in 1999, as 61.5% of the electorate cast a ballot.
Background
Fall of the government
After the disappointing results of the Socialist Party (PS) in the 1999 elections, the PS government entered in a series of crisis. Resignations of ministers from government and incapacity of passing legislation in Parliament led to controversial, and weird, alliances, like the 2000 and 2001 budgets which were approved by a sole CDS – People's Party (CDS–PP) Member of Parliament, Daniel Campelo, in exchange for the government approving a cheese factory in Campelo's hometown, Ponte de Lima.
The Socialist Party suffered a big, and unexpected, defeat in the December 2001 local elections. The party lost major cities across the country, mainly Lisbon, Porto, Sintra and Coimbra to the Social Democratic Party. Due to this surprising defeat, Prime Minister António Guterres announced he was to tender his resignation as Prime Minister in order to avoid the country falling "into a political swamp". Shortly after, President Jorge Sampaio accepted Guterres resignation and called snap elections for March 2002.
Leadership changes and challenges
PSD 2000 leadership election
After the 1999 election defeat, Durão Barroso's leadership started to be challenged and criticized. In January 2000, Durão Barroso called a snap party congress to resolve the leadership dispute. Alongside Barroso, Pedro Santana Lopes and Luís Marques Mendes also ran. Durão Barroso was reelected as PSD leader and the results were the following:
|- style="background-color:#E9E9E9" ! align="center" colspan=2 style="width: 60px"|Candidate ! align="center" style="width: 50px"|Votes ! align="center" style="width: 50px"|% |- |bgcolor=orange| | align=left | José Manuel Durão Barroso | align=right | 469 | align=right | 50.3 |- |bgcolor=orange| | align=left | Pedro Santana Lopes | align=right | 313 | align=right | 33.6 |- |bgcolor=orange| | align=left | Luís Marques Mendes | align=right | 150 | align=right | 16.1 |- |- style="background-color:#E9E9E9" | colspan=2 style="text-align:left;" | Turnout | align=right | 932 | align=center | |- | colspan="4" align=left|Source: Results |}
PS 2002 leadership election
Following the resignation of António Guterres as Prime Minister and PS leader, the party started the process to elect a new leader. The popular minister in Guterres cabinet, Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, and PS member Paulo Penedos, were the two candidates on the ballot. Around 121,000 PS members were registered to vote. In the end, Ferro Rodrigues got almost unanimous support by being elected with almost 97% of the votes. The results were the following: