2012-05-06

Greek preliminary results: ruling parties finish with under 40%

If the preliminary results hold up, my bet on New Democracy and PASOK taking less than 38% of the vote looks solid. Here's a report fromFrance24:
Official projected results showed Evangelos Venizelos’ PASOK party plunging to third place with 13.6 percent and 42 seats in the 300-member parliament. The conservative New Democracy was projected in the lead with 19.18 percent and 109 seats, far below the 151 needed to form a government. The margin of error was 0.5 percentage point.
That would give two currently ruling parties about 33% of the vote, far below what is needed to form a government. Via AFP:
leftist Syriza, which scored 15.5-17.0 percent, more than triple its 4.6 percent of 2009.

...Golden Dawn was also set to enter parliament for the first time since the end of the military junta in 1974, with 6.5-7.5 percent, making it the sixth-biggest party in the 300-seat chamber with some 20 lawmakers.
The article tags Golden Dawn as Neo-Nazi, but as anyone paying attention to the debt crisis knows, Greeks hate Germans and still demand WWII reparations, thus while far right, Golden Dawn is most certainly not a Nazi party.
Independent Greeks, a new right-wing party set up by New Democracy dissident Panos Kammenos, polled around 11 percent to become the fourth-biggest party, followed by the communist KKE on 8.0-9.5 percent.
The Democratic Left, a Europhile new leftist party, notched up 5.5-6.5 percent. In total seven parties were set to enter parliament compared with just five after the last election.
I haven't seen election analysis yet, but since the majority of Greek voters rejected austerity and a ruling coalition will be difficult to form, a short-term anti-austerity coalition may be a possibility. From Bloomberg:
Before yesterday’s election result, Tsipras had proposed joining forces with the Communist Party of Greece, the oldest parliamentary party in the country, and the Democratic Left, which won 6 percent of the vote, to form a coalition.

Both parties have rejected the overture, with Communist Party chief Aleka Papariga repeating her refusal last night.
If there's going to be a coalition, it will be across ideological lines. Considering the negative social mood, the question is whether Greece can focus its negative social mood on fighting foreigners or fighting with each other. If they unite against the Troika, austerity is dead. If they cannot agree, there will be new elections very soon.

Greek legislative election, 2012
250 seats will be distributed on the basis of proportional representation, with a threshold of 3% for entry into parliament. The other 50 seats will be awarded to the leading party (see: Greek election law). Parliamentary majority is achieved by a party or coalition of parties that command at least one half plus one (151 out of 300) of total seats.
Here are the latest results continuously updated:
As it stands right now, ND and PASOK, the previous ruling coalition, have 150 seats between them and all other parties have 150.



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