According to the results of the eight European elections that have taken place since Portugal joined the European Union in 1986, four were won by the party that was in Government and four by the main opposition party. However, only in two cases did the result end up being confirmed in the legislative elections and leading to changes in the executive. The context in which the European elections of 9 June will be held - less than three months after legislative elections that resulted in a near tie between the Democratic Alliance (AD) and the PS, with 28.02% and 28.00%, respectively - make these elections a kind of "second round" of the legislative elections, according to political analysts. Despite having so far avoided making statements about possible national interpretations, both the leader of the PSD and Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, and the Secretary-General of the PS, Pedro Nuno Santos, have already assumed the objective of winning them. "We are going to win the European elections so that we can win Portugal soon after", said Pedro Nuno Santos at a rally in Parque das Nações, in Lisbon, while Montenegro asked the PSD not to be bothered too much "by the opposition parties that are only looking for electoral revenge". "The European elections are not an opportunity for electoral revenge, but an opportunity for us to win more elections, for the good of Portugal and Europe", he said, at a dinner in Lisbon within the scope of the PSD's 50th anniversary. The PSD won the European elections of 1987 and 1989, when the party governed the country with an absolute majority, led by Cavaco Silva, albeit with much more modest results for the European Parliament than for the legislative elections. Also in 1999, the PS managed to win the European elections when the socialists led the executive, in the first Government of António Guterres, and there with very similar results in June for Europe (43%) and in October in the national elections, when António Guterres' PS came close to an absolute majority with 44% and 115 deputies. In the last elections, in 2019, the PS won the elections again while leading the Government, with António Costa as Prime Minister, again registering close results between the European elections (33.38% of the votes) and the legislative elections that followed in October (36.34%). Besides these occasions, the remaining four European elections (1994, 2004, 2009 and 2014) were always won by the opposition party, but this did not always translate into a change of executive. The PS's first victory in European elections, in 1994, the final stretch of Cavaco Silva's second majority, can be interpreted as a sign of the electorate's desire for change, after ten years of the PSD in power. But if for the European Parliament the socialists and social democrats are almost tied (34.87% against 34.39%), a year later in the legislative elections the difference is much more expressive, with Guterres' PS getting 43.7% of the votes against 34.1% of the PSD. Between one election and another, Cavaco Silva left the leadership of the PSD, a party that came to be presided over by Fernando Nogueira. If in 1994 the social democrats may have received a 'yellow card' of warning for the legislative elections of the following year, in 2004 one can almost speak of a direct 'red card'. Prime Minister since 2002, Durão Barroso resigned from his post just 15 days after the defeat in the European elections of June 2004 (the socialists had their biggest victory ever with 46.4% of the votes) to run for President of the European Commission, a position he would hold for 10 years. Santana Lopes replaced Barroso as leader of the PSD and as Prime Minister, without elections, a decision by the then President of the Republic, Jorge Sampaio, which would lead Ferro Rodrigues to resign as Secretary-General of the PS. A few months later, Sampaio would even call early legislative elections and the PS, already led by José Sócrates, obtained in February 2005 its first -- and so far only -- absolute majority in history. In 2009, although the PSD defeated the PS in June in the European elections, Sócrates won the legislative elections again in October against Manuela Ferreira Leite's PSD, but lost the absolute majority and the country would have early legislative elections again in 2011, in addition to a request for external aid. In 2014, the scenario was reversed: the PSD and CDS-PP governed in coalition and, also together, lost the European elections. However, the short distance to the socialists (who got 31.5% of the votes against 27.7%) ended up causing an internal crisis in the winning party, culminating in the replacement of António José Seguro by António Costa at the head of the PS. Just over a year later, in the legislative elections of October 2015, the PS's victory in the European elections was not repeated, and the PSD/CDS-PP coalition won the elections with 36.8% against 32.3% of the socialists. The victory would, however, be insufficient for the social democrats and Christian democrats to form a Government and António Costa would be appointed Prime Minister after managing to negotiate agreements with BE, PCP and the Greens, in an unprecedented solution in Portuguese politics. Read Also: European elections: PS won 5 times, PSD 3. Costa with the best result ever (Portuguese version)