Greece 2012

[Meeker]

Well KKE has refused to meet with SYRIZA as well. Tsipras has laid out a schedule of meetings that take him through Thursday so I guess we'll have to wait until then for him to officially give up. He's also meeting with the Greens and another minor leftist party that missed the threshold (perhaps to boost their profile for the next election?) and with "business and trade union leaders" (just for kicks I guess? to make him seem more Prime Ministerial?)

[Nhoj]

Well KKE has refused to meet with SYRIZA as well. Tsipras has laid out a schedule of meetings that take him through Thursday so I guess we'll have to wait until then for him to officially give up. He's also meeting with the Greens and another minor leftist party that missed the threshold (perhaps to boost their profile for the next election?) and with "business and trade union leaders" (just for kicks I guess? to make him seem more Prime Ministerial?)

Is it possible hes trying to get them to run on a Joint list with syriza for june? iIm not sure if joint lists are allowed or not]

[Landslide Lyndon]

He is just building bridges for next month's election. Tsipras never seriously intended to form a government.

[politicus]

What will Pasok do, when its their turn (as third largest party) to try to form a government? Just say outright its impossible, or what do you think?

[Peter the Lefty]

bourgeois press fail: CNBC refers to Tsipras as 'Greek Communist leader'

http://www.cnbc.com/id/47323787

Forbes referred to him as "bailout-hater."  The article's title was "Bailout-Hater Tsipras Now Trying to Form Government in Greece." (they could've at least said something more professional like "Bailout Opponent" or "Anti-Bailout Leftist.")  It also called his rhetoric "violent."  And of course, the last paragraph was all about how markets are reacting negatively. 

[You kip if you want to...]

bourgeois press fail: CNBC refers to Tsipras as 'Greek Communist leader'

http://www.cnbc.com/id/47323787

Forbes referred to him as "bailout-hater."  The article's title was "Bailout-Hater Tsipras Now Trying to Form Government in Greece." (they could've at least said something more professional like "Bailout Opponent" or "Anti-Bailout Leftist.")  It also called his rhetoric "violent."  And of course, the last paragraph was all about how markets are reacting negatively. 

The best i've seen him described by the clueless English-language press is "far-left", which is pushing it.

Why can international press never cover other country's elections properly!?!?!?

[Landslide Lyndon]

Tsipras isn't a bailout opponent. He is welcoming the funds but is opposed to the austerity measures and reforms that come attached with them.

[Beet]

If somehow funds are cut off from Greece yet the country remains on the euro still, the situation might still be salvaged. As I understand it, popular support for remaining on the euro remains much higher than popular support for austerity. If Greeks saw for a brief time what life is like without external funding, public opinion may change. Let us say government services are shut down, it is like the strikes in the UK in 1974 or 1979. At the same time, Germany must give Greece more time to fulfill its obligations, as well as stimulate its own economy. Finally, the ECB must play a role in protecting financial stability. This goes beyond Greece, the fate of 100 million or more across the continent are directly impacted, and the entire world is indirectly impacted.

[politicus]

If somehow funds are cut off from Greece yet the country remains on the euro still, the situation might still be salvaged. As I understand it, popular support for remaining on the euro remains much higher than popular support for austerity. If Greeks saw for a brief time what life is like without external funding, public opinion may change. Let us say government services are shut down, it is like the strikes in the UK in 1974 or 1979. At the same time, Germany must give Greece more time to fulfill its obligations, as well as stimulate its own economy.

Since Greek Euro membership is the main problem now, thats not a good solution.

[Roma Caput Mundi]

If somehow funds are cut off from Greece yet the country remains on the euro still, the situation might still be salvaged. As I understand it, popular support for remaining on the euro remains much higher than popular support for austerity. If Greeks saw for a brief time what life is like without external funding, public opinion may change. Let us say government services are shut down, it is like the strikes in the UK in 1974 or 1979. At the same time, Germany must give Greece more time to fulfill its obligations, as well as stimulate its own economy.

Since Greek Euro membership is the main problem now, thats not a good solution.

At the same time,they can't quit the Euro without quitting the EU.

[Vasall des Midas]

He is just building bridges for next month's election. Tsipras never seriously intended to form a government.

It looks to me that he's being as serious as you can be about things like that when you know beforehand that you don't, actually, stand a chance - presumably mostly because he thinks that's what the voters expect from him and he wants to win next month's elections. So, basically, what you said.

[Vasall des Midas]

And some outfit called Koinoniki Symfonia that polled just under 1% nationally topped the poll in the small dodecanese island municipality of Astypalaia.

Erm, no they didn't -- it seems they got only 1 vote there: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/may/06/greece-elections-results-map?newsfeed=true

Indeed, I actually named the wrong island. Agathonissi, not Astypalaia. (Also, I belatedly realized that Koinoniki Symfonia is, of course, the PASOK splinter Koisy. And sure enough, checked it and one of their eight MPs was from Dodecanese (and presumably from Agathonissi?)
Agathonissi is also the northernmost island in the Dodecanese.

[Vasall des Midas]

The Greens lost votes in their earlier Attic strongholds, gained elsewhere esp. in the islands (where they'd done relatively well for rural Greece even before). KKE also lost in a few places esp. in Attica. Tactical support for Syriza?

[Vasall des Midas]

I haven't found the whole thing, but I've found a law changing part of the election procedure, and suddenly why the seat distribution is so bizarre is making a lot more sense.

The process appears to be - roughly - like this:

1) Calculate the number of seats nationally for all the parties.
2) Award the one-seater district's seats on an fptp basis (provided the fptp winner has crossed the national threshold). Award seats in multi-member seats according to an electoral quota: in a three-seater, award a seat to any party with over a third of the vote etc. This is of the entire valid vote, not the after-threshold vote. Obviously a sizable number of seats remain unallocated - most of them with an election result like this one.
3) Repeat procedure, for votes not yet "used" (this includes all losers in single-seaters, obviously), at the periphery (region) level. Attribute any seats won this way back to nomoi with open seats by a process I haven't found. The logic here is that if Party A has some elevated non-majoritarian support in Region B which consists only of fairly small constituencies, it should still have a good chance of electing a regional MP.
4) Calculate the number of seats parties are still due, still not including the fifty seat bonus, allocate 12 of them (which twelve? I don't know) to the national replacement lists and the remainder to nomoi that still have seats open, by whatever process.
5) You should still be left with fifty nomoi seats left open. Those become the topup seats.

And suddenly we at least understand the difference between
Imathia ND 21%, 0 seats out of 4
Pieria ND 27%, 3 seats out of 4.

The other parties' slightly lower shares in Pieria (or in the case of PASOK, who polled 16% in both, perhaps Imathia's slightly larger size or somesuch), led to all the seats in Imathia and just one (or two, ND getting one) of those in Pieria being filled in steps three and four. Hence, two Pierian topup seats for ND.

[Χahar]

Well KKE has refused to meet with SYRIZA as well. Tsipras has laid out a schedule of meetings that take him through Thursday so I guess we'll have to wait until then for him to officially give up. He's also meeting with the Greens and another minor leftist party that missed the threshold (perhaps to boost their profile for the next election?) and with "business and trade union leaders" (just for kicks I guess? to make him seem more Prime Ministerial?)

Is it possible hes trying to get them to run on a Joint list with syriza for june? iIm not sure if joint lists are allowed or not]

SYRIZA is itself a joint list of a number of left-wing parties, so that would make sense.

[Bacon King]

The Greens lost votes in their earlier Attic strongholds, gained elsewhere esp. in the islands (where they'd done relatively well for rural Greece even before). KKE also lost in a few places esp. in Attica. Tactical support for Syriza?

Quite possibly; the places where Greens and Commies lost votes are all pretty high up on the list of districts where Syriza had the greatest increase in vote share, so there certainly appears to be a correlation at first glance.

[blagohair.com]

I doubt it, no one expected SYRIZA to do so well and KKE voters wouldn't vote for a non-communist party under any circumstances.  A perfect example of this is how the labor unions refused to meet with Tsipras (the labor unions are pretty much run by KKE with a little bit of PASOK, which is why KKE always gets appr. 8%, the labor union vote).

SYRIZA had the support of the Democratic Left and ANEL (Kammenos) which would have given them 52+19+33=104 seats, so they could have governed with an additional 17 votes if at least 60 MPs from other parties didn't vote.  It would have been really difficult to govern however if ND had 108 MPs, so they asked Venizelos and Samaras to publicly declare they are against the bailout.

SYRIZA is by far the most socially liberal party in Greece, so I'm surprised they did so well, but I guess that also explains why they did so well in urban centers and the islands.

Venizelos tomorrow will ask Kouvelis (Democratic Left) to become the Prime Minister in a PASOK-ND-Democratic Left government and when he refuses in the next elections SYRIZA will win first place easily while PASOK will be in danger of not even getting 3%.  ND will also lose some votes to ANEL and perhaps to the new alliance between DISY and Drasi.  It will be interesting to see how the traditional right-wing voters of DISY react to the fact that one of the leaders of Drasi is gay activist Vallianatos.

I also have a feeling that KKE will lose votes to SYRIZA since many left wing voters are beginning to realize what a joke the communist party is.  What's interesting is that even if SYRIZA is the first party they will not get the 50-seat bonus because they are a coalition of 16 smaller parties, and coalitions are not allowed to get the bonus.  There is some talk however that the SYRIZA parties might unite into one in order to form a government.

It will be interesting to see how people react to Golden Dawn.  A lot of their voters didn't realize what they were dealing with since they media never gave them the chance to speak before the elections (huge mistake) and now that they're learning more about them, a lot of older voters are shocked.  So there's a good chance that their percentage will drop.

[Leftbehind]

What's interesting is that even if SYRIZA is the first party they will not get the 50-seat bonus because they are a coalition of 16 smaller parties, and coalitions are not allowed to get the bonus.  There is some talk however that the SYRIZA parties might unite into one in order to form a government.

Thanks for that, I was unaware of this obstacle.

[politicus]

Interesting post. I doubt Pasok will fail that much. They have some core supporters (7-8%).

Didnt know about Syiza not getting the bonus. They simpy have to unite, otherwise its (even more)ridiculous. But if they dont, who gets the bonus? The second party could be ND again, would they get it then?

[Zuza]

Didnt know about Syiza not getting the bonus. They simpy have to unite, otherwise its (even more)ridiculous.

It probably will be very hard to unite all 13 (according to Wikipedia) parties, from social democrats to maoists and trotskyists, into one in such a short time...

Maybe Synaspismos will try to run independently?

[Bacon King]

I don't know where you got that info from but I'm 99.9% sure Syriza in first place would still get the bonus.

[Landslide Lyndon]

I don't know where you got that info from but I'm 99.9% sure Syriza in first place would still get the bonus.

Indeed. This part of the law is blatantly unconstitutional and our supreme court has already endorsed a VERY lax enforcement of the law.
Essentially a signed statement by a party's leader declaring that it's a single party and not a coalition is enough.

[Χahar]

Interesting post. I doubt Pasok will fail that much. They have some core supporters (7-8%).

Who? It's not as though the Panhellenic Socialist Movement actually stands for anything.

[Hashemite]

Remember when somebody confused Gael L'Hermine for the PASOK leader? Those were cool days. I'd wager that this Mr. L'Hermine could have done better than the fat retard.

[Bacon King]

Interesting post. I doubt Pasok will fail that much. They have some core supporters (7-8%).

Who? It's not as though the Panhellenic Socialist Movement actually stands for anything.

A few posts back someone said PASOK controls some of the unions, so they're probably a key component of whatever core base the party may have.