How to motivate voters to show up

There is little at stake in Sunday’s election for the European Parliament. Domestic governance was settled in last year’s double election and, barring unforeseen developments, the conservative government will rule for a full second term, ending in mid-2027.

There is a lot at stake for the European project itself, but electorates, in Greece and elsewhere, seem, and have long been, less than enthusiastically engaged.

For their own reasons, all Greek parties have a great interest in attracting as many votes as possible, even as they face the problem of what is called a “loose vote” in which party allegiance matters less than in a domestic election.

Ruling New Democracy has set its performance of 33.12% in the previous Euro election, on May 26, 2019, as the target it must match, if not exceed. A score in the high 20s, even if still far ahead of its nearest rival, might be a warning that its dominance of the political landscape is in peril.

For the second- and third-place SYRIZA and PASOK, the battle for the center-left is also very important. Many among them, especially in socialist PASOK, believe that second place is still up for grabs, despite the downturn in the polls since last December. And new SYRIZA leader Stefanos Kasselakis, who had set the party’s score in the June 2023 election (17.83%) as the bar, is now talking about exceeding 20%.

Prognostications are risky, given the uncertainty about turnout and the presence of the New Left – set up by former SYRIZA leaders, which is polling near 3%, the threshold needed to elect an MEP – and, to PASOK’s right, of the Democrats, the party of former minister Andreas Loverdos, which, some pollsters say, serves as a destination for disaffected centrist, and limits PASOK’s appeal to the same group which massively voted in 2019 and 2023 for ND leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis, rather than his party.

Recent polling by New Democracy shows that vote leaks to the far-right in the country’s north may have peaked but another front has opened in the Peloponnese, with the far-right as beneficiaries, again. Party cadres also privately say that supporters of former hard-right leader Antonis Samaras are reluctant to mobilize, partly because of their distaste for the same-sex marriage legislation supported by Mitsotakis.