What kind of poll win does SYRIZA need to eye snap elections?
There will be a number of results to look out for in Greece’s elections on Sunday: Will SYRIZA win any of the key cities or regions? Will independents reign over party nominees? Will New Democracy prevail in the regional vote? But the result that will dominate proceedings will be who wins the European Parliament elections and by how much.
The question everyone wants answered is whether SYRIZA will come away with a clear victory. The leftists are favourites to come out on top but the unreliability of opinion polls, and perhaps the instability of public opinion itself, means that it has been very difficult to judge what kind of winning margin, if any, is likely.
If the opposition party wins, the difference between SYRIZA and New Democracy will be crucial in determining whether the leftists feel they have a legitimate right to push for snap national elections after the European vote.
SYRIZA alone calling for elections is not enough to change the dynamic of Greek politics but a sizeable defeat for New Democracy and a poor showing for PASOK, which is running as part of the Elia (Olive Tree) alliance, would create unease in those parties as well. The pressure on the government from within its ranks, as well as outside, may be too much to withstand. Beyond that, a disappointing showing by the PASOK-led alliance could trigger developments within the socialist party. This could take the form of a leadership challenge against Evangelos Venizelos or the departure of MPs.
In this respect, it is interesting that SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras has finally put a figure on what margin of victory he expects to be decisive. Speaking to Skai TV on Wednesday, he said that a win of 4 to 6 percentage points over New Democracy would be enough to trigger “political developments.”
Previous comments from the SYRIZA camp had suggested that the party would need to gain more than the combined total of the New Democracy-PASOK vote. In some respect, this tallies with the figure Tsipras gave because Elia is not expected to gain more than 6 or 7 percent.
However, there will be at least three other factors that SYRIZA will have to take into account: What share of the vote it gets, what the turnout is and how results turn out in the local elections. It will be very difficult for SYRIZA to argue that it has a case for snap polls if it is not able to improve on the 26.9 percent of the vote it received in the June 2012 parliamentary elections.
Even if it matches this vote and couples it with a sizeable margin of victory over New Democracy, the government is likely to argue that there is no evidence of public opinion moving in SYRIZA’s favour.
Turnout
A low turnout for the European vote will also count against SYRIZA if it wins. Participation in the EU ballot reached an all-time low five years ago in Greece when just 52.6 percent of registered voters took part. Although still above the EU average, this is considered very low for Greek standards. In comparison, participation in the 2009 legislative elections reached 70.9 percent. Turnout in Greece for the European elections has been dropping steadily
A factor that may play a part in the participation rate is that the EU elections coincide with the second round of the local ballot, which traditionally sees fewer voters going to polling centres. It should be noted that the government hastily passed an amendment earlier this year to allow the EU elections to coincide with the second round of the local vote rather than the first. In the last local elections of 2010, voter participation stood at almost 61 percent on the first Sunday and at around 48 percent a week later.
Local results
If the coalition parties do suffer a defeat, they are likely to try to offset this against a more convincing showing in the local elections, where candidates backed by New Democracy and/or PASOK are on course to do well at a municipal and regional level. If SYRIZA fails to make an impact at the local level, the government will use this to strengthen its case for arguing that the opposition party does not have the legitimacy to claim there has been a sea change in public opinion.
SYRIZA will be hoping that either Rena Dourou, challenging for the Attica governorship, or Gavriil Sakellaridis, running for Athens mayor, will be able to grab an unexpected victory. Even if one of these candidates wins it will be a significant boost for SYRIZA, which has had a negligible presence in local politics.
Outcome
Taking all this into account, if the turnout does not reach a new record low and SYRIZA sees its share of the vote run into the high 20s, while support for New Democracy and Elia (PASOK) fails to surpass this, then conditions will be ripe for the opposition party to call for snap elections.
SYRIZA will look to the precedent of June 2009, when PASOK beat the ruling conservatives by 4.3 percentage points in the European elections. It was the socialists’ first electoral victory of any kind over New Democracy since April 2000 and forced an increasingly beleaguered Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis to call national elections for October 2009. Buoyed by the result of the European elections, PASOK won the ballot with a difference of 10.4 percentage points.
There is no certainty, though, that a convincing SYRIZA win will prompt early elections. Much will depend on the government’s cohesion and whether Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and his advisers feel the coalition can ride out the storm, at least until Parliament has to elect a new president of the republic at the end of February. SYRIZA has already said that it will try to force national elections then if there is no move by the government before then.
