2006 Portuguese presidential election

Presidential elections were held in Portugal on 22 January 2006 to elect a successor to the incumbent President Jorge Sampaio, who was term-limited from running for a third consecutive term by the Constitution of Portugal. The result was a victory in the first round for Aníbal Cavaco Silva of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) candidate, the former Prime Minister, won 50.54 percent of the vote in the first round, just over the majority required to avoid a runoff election.

It was the first time in which a right-wing candidate was elected President of the Republic since the 1974 Carnation Revolution. From 2006 until 2026, the PSD supported candidates won every presidential election in Portugal.

Voter turnout was 62 percent. Cavaco Silva was sworn in as President on 9 March 2006.^[1]

In the presidential election of 14 January 2001, the outgoing Socialist Jorge Sampaio was re-elected in the first round with 55 percent of votes. Because he was term-limited, he was forbidden, by the Constitution, to run for a third consecutive term.

In the parliamentary elections of 20 February 2005, the Socialist Party, led by José Sócrates, won for the first time in its history with an absolute majority of seats, while the Social Democratic Party led by Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes fell below 30 percent, their worst result since 1983.

To cope with the bad fiscal situation, the government introduced a policy of fiscal restraint, combining higher taxes, lower public treatments and privatizations. Adding to this, a bad summer in terms of wildfires put more pressure in the government. This policies were not popular and as a result, the Socialists were defeated in the local elections on 9 October 2005. In the follow-up for the presidential elections, the Socialists decided to nominate their former secretary-general, Mário Soares, President of the Republic between 1986 and 1996. This decision divided the party, which led Manuel Alegre, a member of the party parliamentary group, to announce his candidature as an independent. The Social Democratic Party opted to support their former leader Aníbal Cavaco Silva, Prime Minister from 1985 to 1995, and presidential candidate defeated in 1996.

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, to be elected, a candidate needs a majority of votes. If no candidate gets this majority there will take place a second round between the two most voted candidates.

Thirteen citizens sought election officially, but only six gathered the 7,500 signatures required under the constitution to be a candidate in the poll. All the candidates except for Cavaco Silva are considered to be from the Portuguese political left.

The other potential candidates who, according to the Constitutional Court, did not gather enough signatures, were:

• Josué Rodrigues Gonçalo Pedro;
• Luís Filipe Guerra – leader of the Humanist Party;
• Teresa Lameiro;
• Manuela Magno – nuclear physicist;
• Carmelinda Pereira – leader of the Workers Party of Socialist Unity (POUS);
• Luís Botelho Ribeiro;
• Diamantino da Silva;

The table below shows voter turnout throughout election day including voters from Overseas. Due to lack of data from the 2001 election, it's not possible to compare the turnout throughout election day between the two elections.

• Strongest candidate by electoral district. (Azores and Madeira not shown)
• Strongest candidate by municipality.

• Portuguese Electoral Commission
• Official results site, Portuguese Justice Ministry
• NSD: European Election Database - Portugal Archived 2014-12-20 at the Wayback Machine publishes regional level election data; allows for comparisons of election results, 1990–2010