June 25 Election Results: Strong Government, Weak Official Opposition, and Strong Small Parties

The repeat elections on June 25 are in the past, but their results will affect the country for several more years, writes Pronews editor Theophrastos Andreopoulos.

At first glance, the following conclusions can be drawn: New Democracy emerged from these elections not only without losing votes, but also becoming stronger, while the official opposition suffered a real crushing defeat. So much so that with the 48 seats she won as a result of her meager results in the elections, she will not even be able to file a formal objection to the future government.

At the same time, the gap between New Democracy and SYRIZA is about 22 points, which gives it reason to win another four years when the current term expires, unless there are miracle-wonder situations that sharply balance the huge electoral “gap”.

A strong new mandate was given to Kyriakos Mitsotakis by voters in Sunday’s elections, and since he won 158 seats in parliament, it’s reasonable to assume his government will have a four-year horizon. Overall, he will face opposition made up of seven different parties, which are expected to develop fierce competition among themselves.

New Democracy will have a comfortable self-sufficiency in the new parliament, while in order for a proposal of impeachment to be brought against her, an alliance of opposition parties will have to do this.

The main loser in the second round is also the leader of SYRIZA, Alexis Tsipras. His party’s ratings collapsed for the second time in a row and fell below 18%, losing nearly 14 points from four years ago. He has paid a heavy price for the way he has led the opposition since 2019.

Therefore, let’s not hide from reality … It was not the government itself that was judged in these double elections new democracy, and the opposition SYRIZA. It lost an additional 2.24%, but a small part of it was converted into gains for PASOK and KKE, two parties that turned out to be marginally stronger. The first increased its strength by 0.40% compared to last May, and the second – by 0.45%. However, in absolute numbers they lost votes, but in the end they won, thanks to the high percentage of abstentions!

More than 800,000 voters who voted in May abstained at the polls this Sunday. New Democracy lost almost 300,000 votes in the electorate, but in percentage terms, their losses amounted to about 0.23%. SYRIZA lost about 260 thousand voters, PASOK – almost 60-70 thousand, KKE – about 26 thousand.

The only party that increased its absolute number of votes is Pobeda (“Νίκη”), which received about 20 thousand more voters and thus was not affected by the entry into parliament of the “Spartans” (“Σπαρτιατών”) party , which received 240 thousand votes, which corresponds to 4.66% of the vote, and took fifth place.

“Greek solution” (Ελληνική Λύση) took sixth place with the same percentage as in May (4.45%), although she was chosen by about 20 thousand voters less. The three right-wing parties will have 34 seats in the new parliament, as they received 12.79% in total.

A high percentage of abstentions gave preference to the eighth party that received a ticket to this parliament, namely the Freedom Course (Πλεύση Ελευθερίας) of Zoe Constantopoulou, who received in this election about 6,000 fewer votes than in the previous ones.

In short, as a result of the elections, a verya strong self-sufficient government, a really powerless official opposition, but not a powerless opposition as a whole. The small parties that get into parliament are able to corner the New Democracy government in too many cases, on national issues the parties of the right, and on social and labor issues the parties of the left.

The vacuum that exists in the opposition allows small parties to act more dynamically.

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