A new political landscape

The huge win by New Democracy in Sunday’s election creates a whole different political landscape than the one most pundits were predicting.

The conservatives achieved a landslide victory with 40.8% of the vote. Theoretically this allows them to form a coalition government with the third party, center-left PASOK, which secured 11.5%. Together they could have a majority in the 300-seat Parliament.

Still, with such an overwhelming result, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is all but certain to opt for a widely expected second election, most likely on June 25, with the goal of forming a single-party government.

Three preliminary messages from this first electoral test in four years:

First, the government still commands the support of by far the largest segment of the voting population, and now has a mandate to boldly move forward with many necessary reforms, at the same time avoiding falling into a trap of arrogance that might come with such a big victory.

Second, main opposition SYRIZA not only failed to make the necessary leap forward to ensure for itself the chance to form the next government, but scoring a disappointing 20% of the vote will lead to internal friction which might be silenced for a while only by the need to remain united in light of the upcoming second election in just over a month from now.

PASOK can be described as the other big winner of Sunday’s political earthquake, achieving a huge increase in its vote

Third, PASOK can be described as the other big winner of Sunday’s political earthquake, achieving a huge increase in its share of the vote (from 8% in the 2019 elections, to 11.5%) and is expected in the campaign that will follow in the next few weeks to push ahead with an effort to increase its percentage further in the second election, even possibly challenging SYRIZA for second place.

The Communist Party saw its support increase to 7.2% thus consolidating its position as the country’s fourth political force.

Similarly, with 4.5%, Greek Solution remains steady in fifth place.

And then there are the three smaller parties, MeRA25 and Freedom Sailing on the far left, and Victory on the far right, all just under the 3% threshold for entering Parliament.

They all face an uphill battle in the second election, albeit an important one in the sense that the number of parties entering Parliament will have an impact on the number of seats the first party will have and hence its ability to form a government by itself.

A House with five parties creates a very different equation than one with six, seven or eight parties.