Greek election - January 25th 2015

[Bacon King]

The five on the right aren't parties, but "other", "undecided" and such

[Bacon King]

Whatever happened to Social Agreement? Do they still exist?

They still have a semi-active website including a post from yesterday where I think they say they're going to participate in the upcoming elections (can someone better at Greek plz verify?)

http://www.koinonikisymfonia.gr

[Bacon King]

Considering that Papandreou's new outfit will doubtlessly take a good chunk of PASOK's remaining supporters, anyone else think it's a realistic possibility that PASOK fails to meet the threshold?

[Bacon King]

I don't see how SYRIZA and The River can form a government after The River took on all those neo-liberals.

I think we need to start thinking about what happens if there's a hung parliament.

SYRIZA landslide in new election? ND squeaker in new election? No winner in new election either? 3rd election? Grand coalition? Coup? Revolution?

It's entirely possible this comment will look ridiculous in two weeks but I really think all possibilities are on the table at this point.

If there's no workable majority after this election, it will basically be the objective failure of electoral democracy. There's no precedent for what happens next.

Do you have any idea what you are talking about

I'm sorry to be rudw but the question needed to be askes

[Bacon King]

I've heard the comparison before that ANEL was essentially a Greek version of the Tea Party. If so, Makri is definitely sounding like their Sarah Palin

[Bacon King]

How have the communists and other far-leftists within SYRIZA reacted to all the overtures Tsipras has made to the church and big business?

[Bacon King]

Concerning the silly argument about SYRIZA's relationship to Communism in general, and the KKE in particular:

SYRIZA was founded in 2004 as a coalition of several parties, including:

• KEDA: split from KKE in 2000
• AKOA: a 1987 successor of KKE-I, which split from the KKE in 1968
• various Trots
• and of course, Synaspismos: formed as a party in 1991 when a bunch of people who had been purged from KKE stayed in their coalition with EAR (the other 1987 successor of KKE-I, which split from KKE in 1968).

(more Trots joined later, and some Maoists too)

As you can see, various organizations that split from the KKE have had a major influence on the shape of SYRIZA today, and its foundation as well as that of Synaspismos before it both literally included direct KKE splitters. The earlier argument on semantics is irrelevant because it hinges on nothing but how you strictly you characterize "breakaway party" and literally nothing else.

Instead, can we talk about how a major portion of SYRIZA is literally communists, and how the party appears to be shifting significantly to the right in preparation for taking power? Do members of the party's left think it's just empty eletion rhetoric, or a necessary compromise to win, or what? Tsipras seems to have surprisingly effective discipline over a very diverse coalition.

[Bacon King]

Major caveat about constituency polling: it is literally meaningless in determining the election's winner

In terms of partisan composition, the Greek Parliament determined solely by nationwide D'Hondt PR. The electoral system works backwards from there to assign the proper number of victorious candidates to each party meeting the 3% threshold. The electoral districts elect between one and forty-two MP's via closed party list, and in general more votes for a party means more of that party's list gets elected there, but there's a complicated formula with lots of thresholds and quotas to be elected at the district level and there are also 12 MPs elected nationwide without being on anyone's ballots- somehow it all balances out in the end (if you're curious, IIRC Lewis found the full rules and explained it all in the 2012 thread). The 50-seat bonus for the largest party is built into this system somehow, coming from their district's prescribed number of MPs. Ultimately, constituency polling can't tell you much about which party's MPs are elected from that constituency, because even the actual constituency results can't really tell you that.

edit- a great example of this is Athens A in May 2012:

SYRIZA: 19.12% (3 seats)
ND: 15.79% (8 seats)
PASOK: 9.71% (1 seat)
ANEL: 8.98% (1 seat)
XA: 8.77% (2 seats)
KKE: 8.58% (1 seat)
DIMAR: 5.99% (1 seat)

[Bacon King]

WOW at PASOK in 5th in Crete

[Bacon King]

When do polls close and any links to results as they come in ?

Polls close "at sunset" but municipalities typically round the time to the nearest hour

[Bacon King]

Has there been much discussion during the campaign about Syriza's political reform ideas?  I saw in their platform that they want proportional representation, by which I'm guessing that they want to abolish the bonus seat provision?  Also, the platform says they support direct democracy.  Do they want to allow something like in Switzerland or many US states where we have initiative and referendum?

They also probably want to remove the local equivalent to the bonus seat provision (the list that wins the 2nd round is guaranteed at least 60% of the seats on the council no matter how the vote was split in the 1st round).

Regarding direct democracy, SYRIZA's 2014 policy specifically lists "people’s legislative initiative, people’s veto and people’s initiative to call a referendum"

[Bacon King]

per GPO, how support has moved between parties (I assume since Euro 2014; my Greek is terrible, I'm just assuming b/c Potami is included)

[Bacon King]

per GPO, how support has moved between parties (I assume since Euro 2014; my Greek is terrible, I'm just assuming b/c Potami is included)

I can't even figure out what those graphics are saying about how the vote is flowing.

19% of KKE goes to SYRIZA
10% of To Potami goes to SYRIZA, 14% to ND
20% of PASOK goes to SYRIZA, 11.5% TO ND
19% of ANEL goes to SYRIZA, 16% to ND
9% of XA TO SYRIZA, 19% to ND
12% of others to SYRIZA, 12% of others to ND

SYRIZA vote breakdown: 91% retained, 1% to KKE, 1% to Papandreou, 0.5% to To Potami, 2.5% to ND, 3% undecided

ND vote breakdown: 83.5% retained, 10% to SYRIZA, 0.5% to To Potami, 1% to XA%, 5% undecided

[Bacon King]

official results page:

http://ekloges.ypes.gr/current/v/public/index.html?lang=en

[Bacon King]

Looking at the election results for the first time (I've been at work all afternoon and evening), the biggest surprise I see is the Union of Centrists randomly breaking 1% for the first time in two decades

[Bacon King]

to add to Vosem's excellent post above, here's some more fun and interesting results that I've found on the local level. The locations are in the format of "Municipal Unit, Municipality, Election District"

Kalentziou, Erymanthou, Achaias: Official Papandreou Pals 4 Life Fan Club
53.65% Kinima
23.74% Syriza
  5.02% PASOK
  4.57% ND
  3.65% ANEL

Smynous, Anatolikis Manis, Lakonias: apparently stuck in 2012
29.47% ND
27.72% Syriza
20.43% PASOK
  6.52% KKE
  6.23% XA

Anatolikis Manis, Anatolikis Manis, Lakonias: literally Hitler
46.66% ND
19.20% XA
18.35% Syriza
  5.10% KKE
  3.77% PASOK

Eydilou, Ikarias, Samou: "Yes Comrade, our elections are very competitive"
39.08% Syriza
36.37% KKE
10.11% ND
  3.67% ANEL
  2.16% PASOK

Arrianon, Arrianon, Rodopis: ND almost fell below threshold
65.93% Syriza
26.66% To Potami
  3.48% ND
  6.72% Kinima
  0.51% PASOK

[Bacon King]

It's official: ANEL is entering a coalition with SYRIZA

Edit- reports are that Tsipras will also be speaking with Potami and KKE as well

[Bacon King]

It's looking likely that ANEL won't directly enter government themselves- but their support allows Tsipras to prove to the President his government will have the confidence of Parliament.

[Bacon King]

Greek stock exchange didn't like waking up to a SYRIZA victory, but they like that the new government found a majority before lunch:

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/quote/ASE:IND

Edit- never mind, looks like the market's in free fall again! Will be interesting to watch this alongside all the breaking news today

[Bacon King]

So where exactly are the similarities between Syriza and ANEL other than that they disapprove of the troika? This almost feels like a coalition between the Left Party and AfD here in Germany.

They find common ground on most anti-establishment stuff. They're both anti-austerity, anti-corruption outsiders who use "neoliberal" as a curse word. Besides that, not much.

[Bacon King]

Tsipras to be sworn in at 4pm local time

Also I think the whole "I only want a coalition with KKE" was mostly just a (fairly succesful) ploy to win a big chunk of KKE voters. I'm wary about the risk of a revolt from the left but if Tsipras has kept them united this far I'm sure he can hold his keep his party together now. No SYRIZA MP is going to want to be the guy who caused austerity to stay

[Bacon King]

So where exactly are the similarities between Syriza and ANEL other than that they disapprove of the troika? This almost feels like a coalition between the Left Party and AfD here in Germany.

Nowhere. ANEL is a far-right party: anti-immigrant, anti-semitic, pro-church and very much pro-law-and-order.
It will be a travesty of a government that won't last long, for better or worse.

Who did you vote for px?

[Bacon King]

One more question px, what is up with EK almost polling 2%? My understanding is that it's the personal vehicle of a Moderate Hero perennial candidate who was a PASOK MP like thirty years ago. Was there a high profile campaign or something?

[Bacon King]

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Actually the only one

[Bacon King]

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Actually the only one

Isn't KKE also kept all its MPs?

my mistake, you are correct! I was going through the different parties by memory and momentarily forgot they existed