May 2023 Greek Legislative Election

Snap parliamentary elections were held in Greece on 21 May 2023. All 300 seats in the Hellenic Parliament were contested. They were the first elections since 1990 not to be held under a bonus seats system, due to amendments to the electoral law made in 2016. Instead, a purely proportional system was used.

The New Democracy of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis achieved an unexpected victory defying the opinion polls, while Mitsotakis' political opponents alleged fraud. As the election did not result in any party gaining a majority, and no coalition government was formed by any of the parties eligible to do so, Mitsotakis called for another snap election in June. On 24 May 2023, as required by Greece's constitution, President Katerina Sakellaropoulou appointed Ioannis Sarmas to be the caretaker prime minister for the interim.

Background

On 8 February 2023 Parliament voted to prohibit parties led nominally or actually by convicts from running in the elections, a provision possibly applicable in the case of the National Party – Greeks party. New Democracy and PASOK voted for the law, while the Communist Party of Greece, Greek Solution and MeRA25 voted against, with Syriza voting present.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited President Katerina Sakellaropoulou on 22 April 2023 in order to request the dissolution of the Parliament due to a ''national issue of extraordinary importance'' (pursuant to Article 41 of the Constitution of Greece); the issue cited was the need of political stability for the achievement of investment-grade. The election day was set for Sunday 21 May, a day before the end of the 30-day period within which elections must be held following the dissolution of the Parliament.

A large number of parties, mostly of the far right, were stopped from running in the elections either because of legal or bureaucratic reasons.

Electoral system

The electoral law under which the 2023 elections were held was passed in 2016 by the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government. Under the Constitution, amendments to the electoral law come into effect starting from the second election to be held following their passage, unless they pass with a supermajority.

SYRIZA-ANEL's 2016 law established a purely proportional system with a 3% electoral threshold. It ditched the 50-seat majority bonus, which had been in place since 1990.

In January 2020, soon after returning to power, New Democracy, which has always been a proponent of majority bonuses since 1974, passed a new electoral law to reinstate the bonus, albeit under a different formula. The party list with the most votes would receive up to 50 extra seats, benefitting disproportionally under a new sliding scale: It gets at least 20 extra seats (assuming it receives at least 25% of the vote) plus another extra seat for every half percentage point between 25% and 40%, for a total of 50 extra seats when reaching at least 40% of the vote. Only the remaining seats (at least 250) are proportionally distributed among all parties above 3% (including the largest party itself).
This 2020 law would take effect starting from the next Greek election after the May 2023 election (which turned about to be just a month later in June 2023, as election winners New Democracy wanted the extra seats to gain an absolute majority of seats).

A 2019 law granted the right to vote for Greeks abroad which have lived for two years in Greece during the previous 35 years and who have submitted a tax return during the year of the election or the previous year. Voters from abroad choose the national-wide ballot of their desired party without choosing candidates, and their vote is counted equally in final results. In this election only 22,857 people from the Greek diaspora were registered as voters, much fewer than expected, because of the legal restrictions in place.

Voting was theoretically compulsory, with voter registration being automatic, but, just as it happened in previous years, none of the penalties and sanctions in place for those who did not vote were enforced.

Campaign

Officially, the election period began on 22 April, although the parties had begun to intensify their campaigning in the days after the first announcement of the date of election. The Greek politicians have employed various methods to outreach their positions, such as town hall meetings, speeches in cafes and squares, methods which are employed both by Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Alexis Tsipras.

New Democracy campaigned on reform and opening of Greece worldwide, while associating Syriza, the rival party, with populism. New Democracy's campaign focuses on tax cuts, investment promises and lower unemployment promises, as well generically on the economy, bringing up their overall management of the Greek economy, with Greece being named the Top Economic Performer for 2022 by ''The Economist''. This was in particular due to Greece in 2022 being able to repay ahead of schedule 2.7 billion euros ($2.87 billion) of loans owed to Eurozone countries under the first bailout it received during its decade-long debt crisis, along with being on the verge of reaching investment-grade rating.

Syriza's campaign focused on the 2022 wiretapping scandal, blaming New Democracy for the inadequate safety measures that resulted on the Tempi rail crash, as well as the housing crisis, the problems of the middle class, the lack of trust of the citizens in Mitsotakis, and other issues.

PASOK, once one of the two main parties, had a campaign focusing on meritocracy, green transition, a strong healthcare system and transparency. Its leader, Nikos Androulakis, decried both Mitsotakis and Tsipras because they supported austerity measures. He insisted that a coalition government, in order to participate in it, must have a nonpartisan leader voted on consensus.

The Communist Party of Greece campaigned on workers' issues, such as the exploitation of workers from employers and bad working conditions in many companies, the Tempi rail crash and the infrastructure from earlier governments, disengagement from the war in Ukraine, on which Greece is a significant supplier of Ukraine, and the housing crisis and living standards. It also emphasized in their campaign that "each vote that goes to the Communist Party, remains there and strengthens the struggle". It opposed the border disputes with Turkey and any other country, which, according to the Communist Party, were encouraged by NATO, the United States, and the European Union. It supported the people-friendly energy planning, and claimed that under the 2023 circumstances, energy was a way of profit for the capital. It supported public education, the legalisation of illegal migrants living and working in the country, as well a free health system. It claimed that the justice system is subordinated in the logic that prioritises profit over human life.

Greek Solution supported economic patriotism, structural changes in the economy in order to reduce the dependency on tourism, the expansion of the territorial waters to 12 miles from the coast, green transition and the exploitation of the country's natural resources.

MeRA25 supported a "break off from the Brussels directives and the interests of the oligarchy", the introduction of a free savings system (Dimitra), the abolition of mandatory conscription, and a change in the status of NATO membership for Greece. It supported the abolition of the energy exchange, and opposed the division of the world in geopolitical blocks. It also opposed the exploitation of the natural resources of Greece. It supported an educational reform, an independent judicial system, public health and public education.

Main party slogans

New Democracy also used the motto , a prominent motto of the party under Konstantinos Mitsotakis' leadership during the 1993 Greek legislative election.Additionally, ΚΚΕ supplemented its main slogan with: , while PASOK-KINAL also used a secondary motto in speeches and TV spots: Also, Greek Solution occasionally used:

Candidates' debates

On 29 April, a cross-party meeting chaired by interim Interior Minister Calliope Spanou reached an agreement to hold a six party leaders' debate on 10 May. The debate took place at 10 May 2023, 11 days before the elections. In the debate, the leaders of all 6 political parties of the Greek Parliament participated, along with 6 journalists representing all major Greek TV networks.There were 6 rounds for 6 themes. The first (1st) theme concerned: Economy, Growth and Development, the second (2nd): Foreign policy and Defense, the third (3rd): State, Institutions and Transparency, the fourth (4th) Health, education and social welfare, the fifth (5th) Energy and the Environment, and the sixth (6th): New Generation (i.e., the youth). Each journalist had 30 seconds to make a question to a candidate and 15 seconds for a follow-up question. The candidates had 90 seconds to answer the first question and 45 seconds for the follow-up.The journalists asking the questions were Sia Kosioni, Antonis Sroiter, Mara Zacharea, Rania Tzima, Panagiotis Stathis and Georgios Papadakis.

Opinion polls

Contesting parties, alliances and independents

On 2 May 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that 27 political parties, 8 alliances and one independent had met the criteria to contest the election. The names of the 36 entities are listed below in alphabetical order.

# United Popular Front
# Front of the Greek Anticapitalist Left (ANTARSYA)
# Assembly of Greeks
# Breath of Democracy
# Communist Party of Greece
# Communist Party of Greece (Marxist–Leninist)
# Course of Freedom
# Dimosthenis Vergis - Greek Ecologists
# EAN
# Ecologist Greens - Green Unity
# European Realistic Disobedience Front - Alliance for the Rupture (MeRA25)
# Free Again
# Greek Solution
# Greek Vision
# Green Movement
# Marxist–Leninist Communist Party of Greece
# Movement 21
# Movement of the Poor
# National Creation
# New Democracy
# New Structure
# Northern League – Krama
# Now All Together
# Organisation of Internationalist Communists of Greece
# Organization for the Reconstruction of the Communist Party of Greece
# PASOK – Movement for Change
# Political Initiative
#
# Social
# – Liberal Alliance
# Stefanos Proitsis (Independent)
# Coalition of Radical Left – Progressive Alliance (SYRIZA)
# Union of Centrists
# Unite Freedom Alliance
# Unity – Truth
# Victory

Results

Results by region

Analysis

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of centre-right party New Democracy routed his main rivals in the parliamentary election, unexpectedly increasing his party's share of the vote but falling just short of an outright majority. With half of votes counted, ruling New Democracy secured more than 40 per cent, building a lead of around 20 points over its nearest rival Alexis Tsipras's Syriza party.

Aftermath

Mitsotakis declared victory, adding he would call a snap election. He said: "Greece needs a government that believes in reforms, and this cannot happen with a fragile government, New Democracy has the approval of the citizens to govern independently and strongly."

Notes

References

Works cited

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