Sunday, October 04, 2009

Greek elections: out with the old

The Greek right have been forced to call a new general election after just two years in power which took place today. They were floundering with an unworkably small ruling group, riots in 2008 and corruption charges just as the recession came in to reap havoc in the Greek economy. They just could not go on.

So the New Democracy Party is out and PASOK (the Labour equivalent) is in. PASOK's victory is more a victory by default as their history of dealing with economic problems is not entirely utopian. The kind of majority PASOK gains all rests with the fledging Green Party, no really, it does.

If the Greens are able to hit the 3% threshold to gain a place in Parliament it may mean PASOK is forced to go into a coalition, although who that would be with is yet to be seen. In the European elections earlier this year the Greek Greens got 3.49% and won their first ever MEP, so the possibility of winning their first MP(s) is eminently possible.

Although it's clear PASOK has won, at the time of initially writing the counting is far from over and for the Greens everything is on a knife edge.

Update figures from here;


Percent Votes Seats Percent 07 Votes 07 Seats 07
Pa.So.K43.93 %2,731,50516038.10 %2,727,279102
Nea Dimokratia33.91 %2,108,5729341.84 %2,994,979152
K.K.E.7.40 %460,119208.15 %583,75022
La.O.S5.55 %344,883153.80 %271,80910
Sy.Riz.A4.50 %280,112125.04 %361,10114
Oikologoi Prasinoi2.46 %152,964
1.05 %75,502

Sadly, although the Greens more than doubled their vote they didn't quite manage to get their first MPs add to this that the two left parties also reduced their vote and representation.

2 comments:

David Cox said...

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes

Anonymous said...

It is a shame that the Greens didn't quite reach the 3% needed to gain representation, but lets remember that a centre-right government has been replaced with a centre-left one.

Anything which gives Europe a more progressive flavour has got to be cheered really.