From 8 per cent to Belém: Mário Soares wins the 1986 run-off

On the night of Sunday 16 February 1986, Mário Soares spoke from a balcony above the Praça do Saldanha in Lisbon. The building housed his campaign movement, the MASP, or National Movement of Support for Soares for the Presidency. Three months earlier the polls had written him off. Now he had beaten Diogo Freitas do Amaral by fewer than 140,000 votes and would be the next President of the Republic.3 sources3 sources

He promised to be “President of all the Portuguese” and said he would hand in his Socialist Party membership card until he left office. He also pointed out that he would be the first civilian president in sixty years. The campaign had split the country down the middle, and the speech was meant to calm it down.3 sources3 sources

His rival had been just as confident. Freitas do Amaral closed his campaign with a rally that filled the Restauradores and the Avenida da Liberdade, and he told his wife that if that did not mean 50 per cent of the vote, he did not know what would. In the end it meant 48.82 per cent.2 sources2 sources

The Constitution of 1976, written after the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 ended the dictatorship, created a president elected directly by the voters for five years. The only one so far was General António Ramalho Eanes, who had directed the operation that put down the left-wing military revolt of 25 November 1975. He was elected in 1976 and re-elected in December 1980 with 56.44 per cent, and the Constitution barred him from a third consecutive term.4 sources4 sources

Soares was the obvious Socialist candidate and one of the most unpopular politicians in the country. He had led the Socialist Party (PS) since its founding in 1973, when he was in exile in Paris, and had been prime minister from 1976 to 1978. From June 1983 he led the “central bloc” government of the PS and the centre-right Social Democrats (PSD), which turned to the International Monetary Fund for the second time and imposed two years of austerity. Unemployment rose, wages went unpaid, and inflation ran at around 20 per cent.4 sources4 sources

In May 1985 the PSD chose Aníbal Cavaco Silva as its leader, and he pulled the party out of the coalition. On 12 June Soares signed Portugal's treaty of accession to the European Economic Community in the Jerónimos Monastery, and the next day he handed his resignation to Eanes. In the general election of 6 October 1985 the PS, with António de Almeida Santos at its head, fell to 20.8 per cent, its worst result. Cavaco's PSD won with 29.9 per cent, and a new party inspired by Eanes, the Democratic Renewal Party (PRD), took 17.9 per cent.4 sources4 sources

The right settled early on one man. Diogo Freitas do Amaral, a law professor and the founder of the conservative CDS, announced his candidacy on 26 April 1985 with a book, Uma Solução para Portugal. Once Cavaco took over the PSD, the two main parties of the right were behind him, and he ran a campaign modelled on American political marketing: white hats, the slogan “Prá Frente Portugal!” (“Forward, Portugal!”) and his trademark green-grey loden coat.3 sources3 sources

The left could not agree on anyone. Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, a chemical engineer and Catholic activist who had been Portugal's first woman government minister and, in 1979, its only woman prime minister, presented her candidacy at the Hotel Ritz in Lisbon on 27 July 1985. She ran as an independent, with help from the small far-left UDP. On 9 December she lodged about 15,000 signatures with the Constitutional Court, and for months the polls had her level with Freitas do Amaral and well ahead of Soares.4 sources4 sources

The same day, 27 July, a PS convention in Lisbon adopted Soares as its candidate by acclamation. He later wrote that he had no illusions: for some in the party it was “a kind way of getting rid of me”. He did not stand in that autumn's general election.3 sources3 sources

The last to enter, on 15 November 1985, was Francisco Salgado Zenha. He had shared a prison cell with Soares in 1947, co-founded the PS with him and was godfather to his daughter, but the two had drifted apart since 1976. Zenha came down from suite 708 of the Hotel Tivoli promising a “new Republic”. Eanes's PRD backed him, after the President's first choice, Manuel da Costa Braz, failed to get a campaign going. The Communist Party (PCP) put up its own man, Ângelo Veloso, who later withdrew in Zenha's favour.5 sources5 sources

The first poll of the race, published on the front page of the weekly Expresso on 12 October 1985, gave Soares 5 per cent. Weeks later, with the campaign under way, he was on 7.9 per cent while every rival was in double figures. Voters described him as incoherent and opportunistic, and his advisers discussed how to persuade him to quit. In the diary he kept, Soares considered it himself.3 sources3 sources

He stayed in. His slogan borrowed a word of Portuguese slang: “Soares é fixe!” (“Soares is cool!”). He toured the country from north to south, offering his famous cheeks to be pinched and kissing children, once by mistake a dwarf he took for a child.1 source1 source

The fight on the left turned personal. In a television debate moderated by Miguel Sousa Tavares, Zenha said Soares would be a bad president. Soares called Zenha's candidacy “fratricidal”, and Zenha answered that Soares was not his brother: “He is not, never was and never will be.” Soares later described the line as a punch in the stomach.1 source1 source

Then came Marinha Grande, a glassmaking town in the district of Leiria and a Communist stronghold, where many factories owed their workers months of wages. On 14 January Soares arrived to visit the Stephens glass factory school and was attacked at the gate by counter-demonstrators. He said later that he took a punch to the face, another to the head and a blow from a stick. The head of his convoy, António Carneiro Jacinto, had his head split open.3 sources3 sources

Accounts of the violence differ: a glassworkers' union leader told Lusa in 2017 that, by some versions, the famous slap never landed. Soares blamed supporters of Zenha, saying he had seen Zenha stickers on their coats. The television pictures shocked the country, and his campaign put them at the start of its next broadcast. His reply became one of his best-known lines: “Marinha Grande belongs to the people, not to Moscow.”3 sources3 sources

On 26 January 1986, 5,742,151 of the 7,617,257 registered voters cast a ballot, a turnout of 75.4 per cent. Freitas do Amaral came close to winning outright with 2,629,597 votes. Soares came second with 1,443,683, about 258,000 ahead of Zenha. Pintasilgo, the early favourite, finished last with 418,961.1 source1 source

Soares called the first round the primaries of the left, and he had won them. Observador's account of his presidency argues that Pintasilgo's decision to stay in the race helped him: had she withdrawn, many of her voters, to the left of the PS, would have gone to Zenha and could have kept Soares out of the run-off. She felt betrayed by Eanes, whose support she had counted on before he backed Zenha instead.2 sources2 sources

The run-off left the Communists with a choice they hated. Soares had been their main opponent since the revolution, when he rallied the forces that set out to stop the PCP from taking power in 1975. But the alternative was the founder of the CDS. On election night Zenha endorsed Soares, and Soares sent emissaries to secret meetings with the PCP leadership.4 sources4 sources

Álvaro Cunhal, the PCP's leader, called an extraordinary congress, the party's eleventh, in Amadora on the edge of Lisbon. Delegates were elected in less than a week, and on Sunday 2 February the congress dropped an earlier resolution ruling out support for Soares. Cunhal told Communist voters to “swallow the toad”, a Portuguese phrase for accepting something distasteful, and vote for him.4 sources4 sources

Soares turned his fire on the right and spoke of an anti-fascist front. In his last television broadcast he accused Freitas do Amaral of letting wages go unpaid at the Porto newspaper O Primeiro de Janeiro, a charge Freitas's side denied. Freitas also lost some support on his own side: the former prime minister Francisco Pinto Balsemão did not formally back him, and Helena Roseta found his campaign too conservative.3 sources3 sources

On Thursday 6 February the two men met for a 90-minute television debate in RTP's studios at Lumiar, moderated by Margarida Marante and Miguel Sousa Tavares. Freitas's team had been split over whether he should accept. His campaign's executive director, José Ribeiro e Castro, later called it a mistake: “From the debate on, he levelled the game.” Freitas's political director, Daniel Proença de Carvalho, said the campaign resisted supporters who wanted harder attacks on Soares, because it did not want to be identified with the far right.1 source1 source

The run-off was held on 16 February, the twenty-first day after the first round and the last the Constitution allowed. More people voted than three weeks before: 5,937,100, or 77.99 per cent of the electorate. Soares won 3,010,756 votes and Freitas do Amaral 2,872,064.2 sources2 sources

The arithmetic is plain. Freitas do Amaral added fewer than 250,000 votes to his first-round total. Soares added more than 1.5 million, close to the 1.6 million that Zenha and Pintasilgo had won between them. The margin, 138,692 votes out of nearly six million, made it the closest presidential election Portugal has held.4 sources4 sources

Soares was sworn in on 9 March 1986, the first civilian president since the military coup of 28 May 1926 that ended the First Republic. He chose the motto “Unite the Portuguese, serve Portugal” and, as promised, handed in his party card at the PS headquarters in the Largo do Rato.3 sources3 sources

Soares spent almost all of his ten years at the Palácio de Belém alongside one prime minister, Cavaco Silva, who had backed his opponent. The first term was mostly calm. When a PRD censure motion brought down Cavaco's minority government on 3 April 1987, Soares refused to install a PS government with PRD and Communist support and called an election instead. On 19 July Cavaco won the first of his two absolute majorities.3 sources3 sources

He invented the “Presidência Aberta”, the open presidency: for days at a time he moved his staff, ministers and a crowd of reporters to one region, starting with Guimarães in September 1986. The Fundação Mário Soares lists 46 state visits between December 1986 and January 1996.1 source1 source

In 1991 the PSD put up no candidate against him. On 13 January he was re-elected with 3,459,521 votes, 70.35 per cent, against Basílio Horta of the CDS, the Communist Carlos Carvalhas and Carlos Marques of the UDP. The second term was stormier. Soares vetoed or sent to the Constitutional Court a string of government bills, and in November 1992 Cavaco complained of “blocking forces” that were stopping him from governing.4 sources4 sources

For forty years 1986 was the only Portuguese presidential election to go to a second round. The next came in 2026, when the Socialist António José Seguro faced André Ventura, leader of Chega, and was elected on 8 February with 66.84 per cent. The Presidency says Seguro's 3,502,613 votes were the most any presidential candidate has received, more than Soares's 3,459,521 in 1991.4 sources4 sources

Soares also set the style of the office. The Presidency's own biography says he left with the PS in government after the 1995 general election and a fellow Socialist, Jorge Sampaio, as his successor. Sampaio took over much of his way of doing the job: a moderating, arbitrating president above the parties, fond of consensus and ritual.1 source1 source

He never quite left politics. He headed the PS list in the 1999 European elections and won, ran for president again at 81 in 2006 and came third with 14.31 per cent, and died in Lisbon on 7 January 2017. At his 2006 concession speech, half the room stood up and the old slogan rang out again: “Soares é fixe”.3 sources3 sources