2005 Portuguese local elections

The Portuguese local election of 2005 took place on 9 October 2005. The election consisted of three separate elections in the 308 Portuguese municipalities, the election for the Municipal Chambers, whose winner is elected mayor, another election for the Municipal Assembly and a last one for the lower-level Parish Assembly, whose winner is elected parish president. This last was held separately in the more than 4,000 parishes around the country.

2005 Portuguese local elections

9 October 2005
All 308 Portuguese municipalities and 4,260 Portuguese Parishes All 2,046 local government councils
Turnout	60.9% 0.8 pp
First party Second party Third party   Leader Luís Marques Mendes José Sócrates Jerónimo de Sousa Party PSD PS PCP Alliance CDU Last election 159 mayors, 41.2% 113 mayors, 37.1% 28 mayors, 10.6% Popular vote 2,150,710 1,933,041 589,384 Percentage 39.9% 35.9% 10.9% Swing 1.3 pp 1.2 pp 0.3 pp Mayors 158 109 32 Mayors +/– 1 4 4 Councillors 911 853 203 Councillors +/– 5 3 4

The Socialist Party may be considered the major defeated party of this election due to a slight loss of mandates. The Socialists did, however, achieve a better percentage of the vote in relation to the election of 2001.

On the right, the Social Democratic Party stole some municipalities from the Socialists, some of them in coalition with the People's Party that was reduced to only one municipality in stand-alone candidacies, Ponte de Lima, continuing its decline in comparison, for example, with the 36 mayors achieved in 1976.

On the left, the Unitarian Democratic Coalition, led by the Communist Party, regained some of its former influence, taking 4 municipalities and several parishes from the Socialists in the districts of Beja, Évora and Setúbal and Leiria achieving a total of 32 mayors, and winning, for the first time, the election in Peniche. The Leftwing Bloc kept the presidency of its single municipality, Salvaterra de Magos.

The election was also remarkable for the several victories of independent candidates, most of them former Socialist, Social Democratic and People's Party candidates who were expelled or given no confidence by their respective parties and, even so, became mayors. The best known were Valentim Loureiro in Gondomar, Fátima Felgueiras in Felgueiras and Isaltino Morais in Oeiras.