Election rivals ponder campaign tactics

The campaign for the May 21 parliamentary election will begin right after the Orthodox Easter, which falls on April 16 this year, and political parties are busy honing their media strategy, searching for catchy slogans and polling incessantly to gauge the mood of likely voters.

A common theme among the three largest parties – ruling conservative New Democracy, left-wing main opposition SYRIZA and the most likely third-place socialist PASOK – is courting the youth vote. The lowering of the voting age by a year – people born on or before December 31, 2006 will be eligible – means that the electoral rolls contain more than 430,000 new voters. Even if only 50-55% of them turn up, according to recent opinion firm estimates, it is still a sizable chunk of the total vote, which could help decide a seemingly tight contest.

SYRIZA has an advantage among youth; last time around, in July 2019, it won the vote of the 17-24 age group (38% versus 30% for New Democracy) even as it lost the overall vote 39%-31%. SYRIZA’s team in charge of its campaign strategy places great emphasis on spreading the party message of “justice everywhere,” “progressive governance,” “political change” and “stability” on social media, and they point to the views achieved by some viral videos, including introducing Mithridatis, a popular hip-hop singer, as a parliamentary candidate.

New Democracy pushes some policies directed at the youth vote, such as help to buy first homes. Otherwise, the ruling party is still in search of a catchy slogan that can reflect both the progress made over the past four years and the need for “change” that cuts across age and class groups. 

Veteran US pollster Stan Greenberg, a founding partner of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQR) and closely affiliated with the Democratic Party, and not only through his marriage to US Representative Rosa DeLauro, has a major advisory role on strategy. In the past, he has advised European politicians such as German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

PASOK wants to re-establish itself as a brand among youth. The once-powerful party bore the brunt of voter disaffection – unfairly, it says – over the financial crisis that erupted in 2010, seeing its vote plunge from over 40% into single digits. Most of its voters bolted to SYRIZA and memories of its glory days are almost irrelevant to younger voters.