Five things to take away from the first round of Greek local elections
The first round of municipal and regional elections in Greece on Sunday produced some surprises but few definitive answers about how the country will vote in the European Parliament polls on May 25 and how this might affect political developments.
SYRIZA and New Democracy can take away some positives from Sunday’s results, although both have to balance these against setbacks.
The momentum appears to be with the leftist party but there are a number of variables that could yet deny it a convincing enough victory in the European vote to raise doubts about whether the coalition can survive for much longer.
1. SYRIZA grows
Sunday’s results could certainly not be called a resounding win for SYRIZA but the opposition party did much to create the sense that it has truly established itself on the political scene. It grabbed first place in the region of Attica and a close second in the City of Athens. This is a significant breakthrough in areas that New Democracy and PASOK have dominated for decades.
The groundwork was already done in the June 2012 elections, when SYRIZA gained 30.6 percent of the vote in Attica. Its candidate for governor, Rena Dourou, gathered 23.8 percent on Sunday and showed that the party is able to transfer its growing nationwide support to local politics.
SYRIZA will also be buoyed by the fact it nearly achieved its campaign target of getting five of its candidates in the 13 regions into the runoff votes next Sunday. In one of the regions, Epirus, its candidate came second but the New Democracy-backed hopeful won just over 50 percent of the vote and was elected from the first Sunday.
The leftist party had a much larger presence in the regions than ever before. The graph below produced by Public Issue suggests SYRIZA saw a 13.2 percentage point increase in support for its regional candidates compared to the local elections of 2010.
Nevertheless, questions remain about whether SYRIZA will be able to translate this into a convincing share of the vote in Sunday’s European Parliament elections. Despite their decline, New Democracy and PASOK remain a more dominant combination outside of Attica than the opposition party. SYRIZA will need backing of somewhere near 30 percent (and possibly more than the aggregate support the coalition parties receive) in the European elections to make a convincing call for snap elections. Despite its advances on Sunday, this remains a tall order.
2. New Democracy slips up
The tactics chosen by New Democracy for the local elections are bound to come under scrutiny. It refused to back established independent candidates in Attica, Athens and Thessaloniki only to see its own hopefuls struggle. In the region of Central Macedonia, it snubbed the incumbent even though he was a party member only to see him thrash the eventual conservative choice at the ballot box.
There is no disguising that the conservatives made some poor choices and suffered some embarrassing results in key seats, inadvertently helping SYRIZA’s cause in the City of Athens and region of Attica, where around a third of Greek voters live.
The saving grace for New Democracy was that many of the candidates it backed did well at a regional level. Hopefuls that had some level of affiliation with the conservatives came out on top in nine of the 13 regions. Although New Democracy saw support for its candidates fall by just over six percentage points since the 2010 elections, according to Public Issue, the centre-right party is still the most dominant on a regional level.
In his comments on Sunday night, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras made it clear that he will continue to play on Greeks’ concerns about what a clear victory for SYRIZA would mean in the EU elections. He has argued that this would put stability at risk and it is certain this will be the main theme of the remainder of what is likely to become a very heated campaign over the next few days.
3. PASOK in the unknown
It is virtually impossible to draw any convincing conclusions about where PASOK stands after Sunday’s vote. It is clear that the party is struggling, that its voters continue to desert it and that it is likely to perform poorly in the European Parliament vote. But beyond that, there can be no certainty about how that will impact on the party’s position within the government.
Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos was quick to stress that the result of both local and European Parliament elections would have to be taken into account on Sunday. This suits PASOK because a number of the candidates it has backed have a good chance of being elected. In Attica, Yiannis Sgouros, a PASOK veteran who will now be backed by New Democracy as well, has a chance of beating SYRIZA’s Dourou in the second round. Unlike the conservatives, Venizelos’s party refrained from nominating candidates directly. This proved a shrewd move as it allows PASOK to interpret and present the municipal and regional vote in a manner that suits its purposes.
The other element that could prove important in the interpretation of Sunday’s results is what kind of impact To Potami has. The centrist party led by journalist Stavros Theodorakis remains somewhat of an enigma but a strong showing from his movement could draw attention away from a SYRIZA victory, with discussions opening up about whether To Potami could in the future be a potential coalition partner.
4. Golden Dawn still there
Despite the coalition’s hopes, Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn showed in the first round of local elections that it still has a menacing presence on the Greek political scene. In the region of Attica, its MP Ilias Panagiotaros got just over 11 percent of the vote. In the City of Athens the party’s lawmaker and spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris grabbed a little above 16 percent.
Golden Dawn performed reasonably in other areas of the country and on a regional level took a little over the 450,000 votes it gained in the 2012 parliamentary elections.
Sunday confirmed that despite the judicial probe against the party, Golden Dawn is not about to fade into the background but will remain a threat to the political system. This has particular implications for New Democracy, which was expected to profit most in terms of votes if the far right party wanes.
5. The variables
The main question everyone will be trying to answer in the days to come is how Greeks will vote in Sunday’s European elections, which will be a test for the government and its survival prospects. The truth is that there are an unprecedented number of variables that could affect the outcome.
For starters, there has never before in Greece been a case of the European vote being held a week after the first round of local elections. In this respect it is very difficult to judge whether and to what extent voter sentiment has been affected by Sunday’s results. For instance, SYRIZA’s breakthrough in Athens and Attica may play a significant part in it stepping over the psychological threshold separating it from being just a party of opposition to one where its candidates are in positions of power.
Equally, the coalition may be able to convincingly argue that the combined forces of New Democracy and PASOK have a much larger sway across the country and that SYRIZA represents only a section of Greece’s urban population.
The other unknown element is how turnout will be affected. Participation in Sunday’s vote was at around 61.5 percent.
Traditionally, however, the abstention rate for the second round of local elections is higher as the outcome in some municipalities and regions has been decided or voters’ preferred candidates have been excluded. It is not clear whether this will also affect the European Parliament vote or whether a sizeable majority of Greeks are still keen to cast their ballots.
The coalition hopes that SYRIZA’s less prominent presence in the second round will mean that some of its potential voters stay away from polling stations.
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