An Election Won’t End Greece’s Troubles
Sunday’s vote is unlikely to yield a new government.
By Akis Georgakellos, the managing director of Strategο, a communication and strategy firm in Athens, and Harris Mylonas, an associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.
Greek opposition leader Alexis Tsipras (left) and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis attend a televised debate between Greek parliamentary party leaders in Athens.
Greek opposition leader Alexis Tsipras (left) and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis attend a televised debate between Greek parliamentary party leaders in Athens on May 10, ahead of May 21 general elections. ARIS MESSINIS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
MAY 19, 2023, 11:21 AM
Greeks are eager for political stability. After years of economic turmoil, the country is within reach of winning back its investment-grade rating in international markets and rehabilitating its place in the eurozone. Geopolitically, tensions with Turkey in the Aegean Sea and new challenges for NATO demand clear-eyed political leadership in Athens. Yet Greece’s May 21 election is unlikely to deliver.
Four years ago, when Kyriakos Mitsotakis became Greece’s prime minister, many pundits and analysts expected that Greek politics would become less turbulent and more technocratic. Mitsotakis, who heads the center-right New Democracy party, ousted leftist Alexis Tsipras, who took office during one of the most politically volatile and economically challenging periods in Greece since its 1974 transition to democracy. However, hopes for calm under Mitsotakis were short-lived: The country soon faced the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic repercussions of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
New Democracy sought to counter economic hardship with generous energy and business subsidies, decreased taxes, and increased pensions. Mitsotakis also raised the minimum wage. And, throughout his tenure, he has made important investments in infrastructure and digitized much of Greece’s bureaucracy. But alleged scandals in Mitsotakis’s government, including the wiretapping and hacking of journalists’ and rival politicians’ phones, as well as a tragic railway accident in February have compounded the public’s suspicion of politics and politicians. Rampant inflation hasn’t helped.
It is in this context that Mitsotakis is asking Greeks to trust him with another four years. The prime minister has argued that his government has dealt effectively with unprecedented crises while also managing to improve Greece’s global standing. If reelected, New Democracy promises to substantially raise both public and private sector wages and put Greece on a stable path to economic growth.
The main opposition party, Tsipras’s Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza, has argued that Mitsotakis’s subsidies are benefiting corporations more than consumers. Tsipras also claims that Syriza could not implement its own ambitious policy agenda when it was in government because Greece was under strict supervision by its creditors. In essence, Tsipras is asking Greeks for a second chance.
But this Sunday’s election is unlikely to hand either Mitsotakis or Tsipras the mandate to form a new government. Greek politics are never that simple.
Greek citizens are becoming increasingly aware of the looming impasse and expect a second election—a redo of sorts—to occur in late June or early July. Some analysts think that this may lead a portion of voters to either abstain or vote for small parties on May 21 in a protest against Mitsotakis and Tsipras, both of whom are seen by some as responsible for Greece’s dysfunctional state. But voters are likely to regroup behind New Democracy and Syriza in the second election as pragmatic impulses kick in.
One reason Sunday’s vote is expected to be a dud is that Greece’s process for allocating parliamentary seats is ever-changing. For three decades, Greece used a system of boosted proportional representation, which gave the party that finished first a hefty bonus of seats; when Tsipras and Syriza came to power in 2015, for example, they earned a 50-seat bonus in the 300-seat Parliament. But this year’s election is the first since 1990 where seats in Parliament will be allocated on a purely proportional basis for any party that passes the 3 percent threshold.
It is not uncommon in Greece for the ruling party to change the electoral system, often to facilitate the creation of a one-party government or to undermine the opposition’s prospects. When such a change passes without a supermajority in Parliament—as has been the case under both Tsipras and Mitsotakis—it goes into effect two elections later. Greece’s electoral rules are not delineated in its constitution, and the frequent changes have contributed to past political instability.
In 2016, Syriza changed the electoral system to one of pure proportional representation. This means New Democracy was elected in 2019 under the same boosted system that saw Syriza win and that the pure proportional representation reform passed by Syriza was poised to come into effect for the next election—this Sunday’s vote. That pure proportional system, however, is already on its way out. In the meantime, New Democracy changed the electoral system into one that offers the party that finishes first a progressively larger share of bonus seats depending on its vote share. This means that, if no government is formed after Greece’s May 21 vote, the redo elections will take place with the gradual seat bonus system. Based on current polling, this will benefit New Democracy.
According to opinion polls, it is doubtful that—under pure proportional representation—any party will receive enough votes to form a one-party government. The chances of a coalition government are also slim. New Democracy is leading all opinion polls by 4 to 7 percentage points over Syriza and has openly declared that its aim is a one-party government. Syriza, which claims the opinion polls are wrong, seeks to finish first in the election and form a so-called “progressive coalition” government with other left or center-left parties.
But those parties may not be on board. The center-left PASOK-Movement for Change is polling third and has suggested it will only join a coalition government if neither Mitsotakis nor Tsipras is at its helm. Unsurprisingly, neither leader is thrilled with this condition. Smaller parties that poll above the 3 percent threshold have also indicated that they are against forming a coalition government with either New Democracy or Syriza.
PASOK is the only Greek political party that is consistently polling above its 2019 electoral results. Under new leadership, the party has attempted somewhat of a rebrand and sought to present itself as a vanguard of change. PASOK’s electoral goal this Sunday is to earn more than 10 percent of the vote, likely by poaching some voters mostly from Syriza; the higher its percentage, the greater its leverage in a possible coalition government with New Democracy or Syriza. (Though New Democracy has expressed desires for a one-party government, if it is forced to form a coalition, it would likely be with PASOK.) In the likely event of a second election, however, PASOK’s vote share would probably diminish as voters would probably return to the traditional flanks of the top contenders: New Democracy and Syriza.
The balancing act for New Democracy is to maintain the trust of centrist voters while not losing its right-wing supporters to other parties. The Greek Supreme Court in early May banned a splinter faction of the far-right Golden Dawn party, headed by a jailed former lawmaker, from participating in the election; the splinter faction was polling above the 3 percent threshold at the time. It remains to be seen which party its supporters will back instead, but for sure it will not be New Democracy or PASOK—which spearheaded the legislative efforts to block the splinter faction.
The new proportional allocation system isn’t the only legal change that may impact the outcome of Greece’s election: The electorate will also be significantly larger. This Sunday marks the first time that 17-year-olds are eligible to vote. (The previous age minimum was 18.) Syriza extended suffrage to 17-year-olds during Tsipras’s tenure. The party has a measurable advantage among young and low-income Greeks, while New Democracy has struggled to attract either group.
In the past, Tsipras has won elections through contrarian rhetoric. In 2015, his campaign messaging could be summed up as “The government that will help end the economic crisis won’t be the one that led us there”—a reference to New Democracy and PASOK as the traditional main pillars of Greek politics—and it resonated with a wide majority of voters. Today, his “Justice Everywhere” slogan is less appealing to the broader public, at least according to opinion polls. In surveys, Mitsotakis is clearly the more popular figure, and New Democracy has sought to leverage this advantage by framing the election as a standoff between the two men. In New Democracy’s playbook, the vote is a decision between security under the party’s continued governance and instability and adventurism under Tsipras and Syriza.
If no government is formed following the May 21 election, a caretaker government run by the presiding judge at one of Greece’s top courts will lead the country until a redo election can be held in late June or early July. In this second election, New Democracy’s gradual seat bonus system would come into effect: The party with the most votes receives a bonus of 20 extra seats, assuming it has earned more than 25 percent of the vote. The bonus will increase by one seat for every 0.5 percent of the vote above 25 percent, to reach a maximum of 50 seats for parties that receive 40 percent of the vote. The remaining seats will be divided among the parties in proportion to their share of the vote.
One thing is certain: The longer it takes Greece to form a stable government, the more uncertainty it will face on both financial and geopolitical fronts. And Greeks have had enough of that.
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