The polls for Madeira’s early regional legislative elections opened today in the archipelago at 08:00, closing at 19:00.
According to the Ministry of Internal Administration (MAI), 254,522 voters are registered, of which 249,075 on the island of Madeira and 5,447 on the island of Porto Santo.
Regarding the September 2023 elections, an additional 645 voters are registered.
In the September 24 elections, abstention was 46.65%, with 135,446 voters voting (53.35%).
The record amount of abstention since 1976, the year of the first elections for the Legislative Assembly of Madeira, was registered in 2015, when 50.42% of the 256,755 registered voters did not go to vote.
In today’s elections, 14 candidates are competing for the 47 seats in the regional parliament, in a single circle: ADN, BE, PS, Livre, IL, RIR, CDU (PCP/PEV), Chega, CDS-PP, MPT, PSD, PAN, PTP and JPP.
In regional legislatures, the representative of the Republic, a position held by Ireneu Barreto, invites a political force to form a government based on the results (which must be published), after consulting the parties with parliamentary seats in the current legislature.
In September 2023, the PSD/CDS-PP coalition won without an absolute majority and elected 23 deputies. The PS got 11, the JPP five and Chega four, while the CDU, the IL, the PAN (which signed a parliamentary influence agreement with the Social Democrats) and the BE obtained one mandate each.
The early elections take place eight months after the most recent regional legislative elections, after the President of the Republic dissolved the Madeiran parliament, following the political crisis triggered in January, when the leader of the Regional Government (PSD/CDS-PP), Miguel Albuquerque , was named a defendant in a process in which suspicions of corruption are investigated.