Prime Minister Mitsotakis’s party has a clear victory in Greece’s parliamentary elections. According to preliminary results, this comes to 40 percent. The leftist Syriza party won less than 18 percent.
In Greece’s second parliamentary election in just five weeks, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotaki’s conservative New Democracy party has a clear lead, according to the first official partial results. Based on 40 percent of the votes counted, he achieved 40.5 percent — nearly the same result as in the previous poll in May.
The largest opposition party, left-wing Syriza under Alexis Tsipras, came in at 17.8 percent. In May, he got 20 percent of the vote.
Mitsotakis will benefit from new voting rights
In the first election at the end of May, the Conservatives won clearly, but rejected the call to form a coalition government. Since then, Greece has been ruled by an interim government. A new electoral law was applied, according to which the strongest party would get 50 bonus seats. So Mitsotakis hopes to form a “stable and effective government” as he said before the new elections.
On May 21, Mitsotakis’s ND had already emerged as the clear winner with 40.8 percent of the vote, but missed an outright majority. This is the best result for ND since 2007.
Under Mitsotakis, the Greek economy has stabilized after years of austerity. Unemployment has fallen, economic growth is projected to be six percent in 2022, the rate of investment has grown, and tourism will rise again this year. During the election campaign, Mitsotakis also emphasized that he had cut more than 50 taxes.
The SYRIZA party could resist Mitsotakis little by little
The leftist party SYRIZA faced difficulties in countering the ND’s trend. After polling just 20.0 percent, he tried to make the social consequences of inflation an issue for many. Tsipras tried again with social promises of higher salaries and pensions. He also wanted to reduce the VAT on groceries and petrol to reduce the burden on citizens.
However, the party suffered further decline in the last elections. After the vote, Tsipras warned of an “out-of-control government” under Mitsotakis.
Other parties in the new parliament
The social democratic PASOK will remain in parliament with 12.9 percent (May: 11.5 percent), the Greek Communist Party KKE with 7.2 percent and the far-right national party Spartiates with 4.8 percent. The right-wing populist Eleniki Lisi also entered parliament with a provisional 4.7 percent.
In addition, the ultra-Orthodox party Niki is expected to be represented in parliament with 3.8 percent. Far-left minor party Plefsi Eleftherias has to worry about entering parliament with three percent (May 2023: 2.9 percent). The Mera25 party of former left-wing finance minister Giannis Varoufakis was far behind with 2.2 percent (May 2023: 2.6 percent).
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