The clear winner of the elections in Greece is Prime Minister Mitsotakis with his party Nea Dimokratia – despite only moderate government successes. Why is he still aiming for a new ballot?
Greece's Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on May 21, 2023 after casting his vote at a polling station in Athens
Greece has just voted – and is already facing a new election. The big and clear winner of the parliamentary elections on Sunday (May 21, 2023) is the conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis with his party Nea Dimokratia (ND) – they came to 40.8 percent and 146 seats in parliament. But that's not enough for the absolute majority, which would require 151 seats. And that's why the winner of the election, Mitsotakis, is now aiming for a new election as quickly as possible. Because the next elections will take place according to a new voting system, through which the winning party can get up to 50 bonus seats.
No wonder Mitsotakis is aiming for a second ballot as soon as possible. Already on the day after the election, he informed the Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou of his intention not to hold exploratory talks with other parties. Rather, he asked them to shorten the constitutionally prescribed deadline for a new election so that it can take place on June 25.
The Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis casting his vote in Athens on May 21, 2023
On the evening of the election, Mitsotakis spoke of a “political earthquake”. Not wrong. Although his government has done only moderately good work over the past four years, Nea Dimokratia has managed to gain votes. Ignoring the devastating train crash in Tempi in early March 2023 and the wiretapping scandal that has been going on for a year, voters rewarded the “stability” that ND had promised them.
“Stability or Chaos”
In contrast, they severely punished the ambiguity and vague messages from Syriza, the main opposition party. Instead of the more than 30 percent hoped for, left-wing Syriza only got 20 percent – almost 12 percent less than in 2019. The chairman of the left-wing Syriza alliance, Alexis Tsipras, was unable to convince voters that he was a “coalition of progressive forces”. because neither the social-democratic PASOK nor the smaller left-wing parties want to govern with Syriza.
Greek opposition leader Alexis Tsipras casting his vote at a polling station in Athens on May 21, 2023
On the other hand, Nea Dimokratia – also with the help of the extremely pro-government media – was able to convince the citizens that Syriza stood for “chaos”. Mitsotakis conveyed the dilemma of the election to the public almost like an ultimatum: “stability or chaos”. And he was successful at it. “The citizens want a strong government with a horizon of four years,” was the Prime Minister's explanation for his unexpectedly large victory the day after.
The defeat of the pollsters
The explanation of the Athens management consultant Vassilis Sakas for the election result is that the citizens have chosen what they believe to be the less bad political manager: “People have said to the politicians, leave us alone and do your work, preferably without experiments,” he says DW.
The Greek pollsters did not recognize this mood and were therefore more blatantly wrong in their predictions than in the past few years. For the New Dimokratia, they predicted a lead of four to a maximum of seven percentage points over Syriza, in the end it was more than 20 percent. “We were all blind and couldn't see what was behind the muteness of the citizens,” says Nikos Maratzidis, professor of political science at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki, who is himself an experienced demoscope. However, the politicians themselves were the blindest, Maratzidis told DW, because they didn't notice whether and how their messages were received by the electorate.
On the opposition bench against each other
Maratzidis is convinced that in the coming years the right will rule in Greece practically without opponents. “The opposition left of center is fragmented and will remain so in the long term,” he says. If you add the election results of Syriza (20 percent), the social democratic PASOK (11.4), the communist KKE (7.3) and the left-wing DiEM 25 of ex-Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis (2.6) – but it doesn't add up Parliament managed – you don't get a majority. But not only that: Syriza and PASOK will fight each other on the opposition bench rather than cooperate.
The Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, here at a campaign event in Athens on April 20, 2023
Although elections in Greece are always good for a surprise, it is already clear that Nea Dimokratia will win the upcoming elections in June and most likely get a comfortable governing majority. Syriza, on the other hand, is likely to try not to disintegrate and stop its fall. PASOK, on the other hand, wants to regain its former strength and is aiming for second place ahead of Syriza. Both projects are open-ended at the moment.
Bad for democracy
The fight between three smaller parties, which narrowly missed out on entering parliament this time, promises to be interesting to jump over the three percent hurdle. It's about the radical left DiEM 25, the politically opaque Plefsi Eleftherias (Course of Freedom) and the radical right and clergy-friendly Niki. But their potential success will not endanger the absolute majority of the ND.
Nea Dimokratia can be expected to rule without a strong opposition for the next four years. A constellation that, according to the political scientist Maratzidis, is not good for the quality of Greek democracy. Maratzidis does not want to forget how vehemently the Mitsotakis government tried to cover up the wiretapping affair. So far, only the competent investigative commission of the European Parliament has put pressure on for clarification. A newly elected ND government will be even more successful in ignoring this pressure.