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.K	43.93 %	2,731,505	160	38.10 %	2,727,279	102
Nea Dimokratia	33.91 %	2,108,572	93	41.84 %	2,994,979	152
K.K.E.	7.40 %	460,119	20	8.15 %	583,750	22
La.O.S	5.55 %	344,883	15	3.80 %	271,809	10
Sy.Riz.A	4.50 %	280,112	12	5.04 %	361,101	14
Oikologoi Prasinoi	2.46 %	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.