Elections and the Socialists

The election for the constituent assembly of 25 April 1975 was crucial in the sense that it exposed a gap between the organizational capabilities and the influence exercised by the Portuguese Communists in government, the trade unions and the mass media and their actual electoral appeal. The Communist Party had indeed increased its membership from 3,000 at the moment of Revolution of the Carnations in April 1974 to 30,000 in October 1974. It would culminate to 100,000 in May 1975, right after the election. This growth was however the result of a newfound freedom to act in the country while its mass appeal was not analogous for the party struggled to cope with labour demands which went much further than its taste, instincts and doctrine permitted. The Communist electoral setback (12.5 per cent of ballots cast) was the consequence of the convergence of two traditions, the one conservative, built on the fifty years of anti-communist orientation of the dictatorship, and the other liberal, which sought to preserve the newly acquired liberties from a lurch to the left. The beneficiaries were the Socialists (37.3 per cent of the vote) and the Popular Democrats (26.3). Not only in the north of the country which was a bastion of conservative tradition did the Communists fare badly.