stringtranslate.com

2007 Greek legislative election

Parliamentary elections were held in Greece on Sunday, 16 September 2007 to elect the 300 members of the Hellenic Parliament. The leading party for a second term was New Democracy under the leadership of Kostas Karamanlis with 42%, followed by George Papandreou and PASOK with 38%. New Democracy managed to secure an absolute but narrow majority of 152 out of 300 seats in parliament. The populist Popular Orthodox Rally entered the parliament for the first time with 10 seats, while the parties of the left, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and Syriza, enjoyed a significant increase in their vote share. KKE received 8% of the votes (up from 6%) and won 22 seats (from 12), while Syriza received 5% of the votes (up 2pp) and 14 seats.

The difference of nearly four percentage points between the first two parties resulted in George Papandreou announcing that he would seek reaffirmation of his party leadership, with Evangelos Venizelos and Kostas Skandalidis also declaring candidacy for the post.[1]

Background

Electoral system

There were concerns that the election could return a hung parliament, mainly due to the recently revised Greek electoral law. Although it preserved the 3% threshold necessary for a party to enter parliament, it decreased the number of seats automatically awarded to the leading party. Parliamentary majority was considered more difficult, especially after the early projection that five parties would cross this threshold for the first time after the metapolitefsi.

According to the electoral law, the first-past-the post party was automatically awarded a bonus of 40 parliamentary seats. The remaining 260 seats were divided among all parties that achieved a minimum 3% nationwide vote tally, strictly in proportion to their polling returns. Since a majority of 151 seats was required, the leading party should secure at least 111 seats (42.7% of 260) in order to be able to form a government. Karamanlis had stated that in the event that no party should manage to achieve a majority, he would seek a new election.[6] Papandreou had vaguely indicated that he may have pursued an alliance with the left, however the SYRIZA and KKE parties had categorically dismissed any possibility of participating in a coalition with any of the major parties.

No opinion polls were allowed to be published after September 1. The polls publicized prior to the election had concluded that:

The law traditionally requires that voting begins at "sunrise" and ends at "sunset". In practice this is rounded up to the nearest top of the hour. Voting began at 7 am and concluded at 7 pm. 7 pm was also the time when media outlets publicized their exit polls and issued their predictions. According to SingularLogic, the information technology contractor of the Ministry of the Interior, initial returns would not reach statistical significance before 11 pm and firm estimates might not emerge until after midnight. Voting took place in 20,623 polling stations – mostly schools – throughout the country, each of which catered to 400–500 voters on average.

Opinion polls

A collection of opinion polls taken before the elections is listed below. According to a law, which was voted by the Greek parliament, publication of opinion polls is forbidden in the fortnight prior to the election date. Therefore, the last day when opinion polls were published was September 1, 2007, and practically all opinion polling firms published their final public reports on August 31, 2007, in time for the evening news.

Exit polls

The Greek media outlets issued their exit polls at 19:00 local time.[7][8]

Results

By region

Aftermath

At 01:00 on 17 September 2007 PASOK leader George Papandreou conceded defeat and Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis thanked the electorate for granting him and his party a renewed term in office. Papandreou also stated that he will seek his party's direct reaffirmation in his leadership, and Evangelos Venizelos, PASOK's informal #2, declared himself "present" in this process. Papandreou went on and retained his leadership.[9]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Most of the earlier polls refer to Synaspismos, part of the Syriza coalition.
  2. ^ Public Issue/VPRC noted that their report was a prediction based on the time-series of opinion polls they had conducted.
  3. ^ Revised exit poll presented at 20:30
  4. ^ Statistical projection based on official returns, presented at 21:30 local time – claimed margin of error: 0.2%

References

  1. ^ "Καθαρή νίκη Παπανδρέου στις εκλογές για την προεδρία του ΠΑΣΟΚ". in.gr (in Greek). 2007-11-11. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  2. ^ 22/8/2007 DIKKI press release Archived 2008-01-22 at archive.today
  3. ^ 3/9/2007 article by Phileleftheros
  4. ^ 2/9/2007 DIKKI press release Archived 2007-09-20 at archive.today
  5. ^ a b c "Σε ποιους «έδειξε πόρτα» ο Αρειος Πάγος" Archived 2007-09-27 at the Wayback Machine, in Eleftheros Typos, 3 September 2007
  6. ^ New general elections to be called if ruling party fails to secure majority in parliament: Greek PM
  7. ^ Exit poll results from in.gr
  8. ^ Exit poll results Archived 2007-09-29 at the Wayback Machine from the Ethnos daily newspaper
  9. ^ Antenna news Archived 2008-02-26 at the Wayback Machine, Θέμα ηγεσίας στο ΠΑΣΟΚ (leadership issue in PASOK), Retrieved 2007-09-17.

Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Greek legislative election, 2007.