Greece parliamentary election - September 20, 2015

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Its happening...

Well, at least according to Wiki. No English language confirmation yet.

EDIT: It was speculation - but I will keep this open. The chance of an autumn election is high.

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New Kontra poll shows Syriza steady, but the bad guys gaining.

Syriza 41.2
ND 23.1
Potami 7.9
XA 7.3
KKE 6.5
ANEL 5.1
Pasok 3.7 
Others 5.2

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The Kontra poll compared to the January election.

Syriza: +4.9
ND: -4.8
Potami: +1.8
XA: +1.0
KKE: +1.0
ANEL: +0.3
Pasok: -1.0

The main thing is that Syriza has gained at the expense of ND.  The others don't really have significant movement. 

The interesting thing is what has happend since EU bend Tsipras arm and forced him to implement austerity. Comparing with the election at this point is uninteresting.

The ND drop to a lower level when they lost the "stop Syriza" crowd is old news.

[politicus]

Sept. 20 is likeliest E-Day.

Okay, I will go with that. It can always be changed back.

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25 Syriza MPs defect to create a new movement called "Popular Unity". Konstantopolou and Varoufakis didn't join them, for the moment at least. That makes it the third largest parliamentary group.

Fun fact: As the third largest party they will be given the chance to form a government once ND has had a shot.

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Just saw the list of the 25 Poular Unity MPs includes former ANEL deputy and well known crazy person Rachel Makri.. Probably one MP Tsipras is glad to see go.

Litsa Ammanatidou
Despoina Charalampidou
Kostas Delimitros
Vangelis Diamantopoulos
Ioanna Gaitani
Ilias Ioannidis
Costas Isychos
Vassilis Kiriakakis
Aglaia Kiritsi
Thomas Kotsias
Michalis Kritsotakis
Panagiotis Lafazanis
Costas Lapavitsas
Stathis Leoutsakos
Rachel Makri
Evgenia Ouzounidou
Thanasis Petrakos
Elena Psarrea
Stefanos Samoilis
Thanasis Skoumas
Ioannis Stathas
Dimitris Stratoulis
Alexandra Tsanaka
Zisis Zannas
Ioannis Zerdelis



Lets print a 100 billion Euros..

http://www.thetoc.gr/eng/politics/article/syriza-candidate-rachel-makri-we-will-print-100-bln-euros

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Varoufakis: Tsipras gets to chose the candidates (and purge dissidents) if the election is held less than a year before the previous one.

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/08/24/varoufakis-if-im-convicted-of-high-treason-it-would-be-interesting/

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September 20 it is. President Prokopis Pavlopoulos has signed a decree calling the election on the expected date. 

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Tsipras has ruled out working with Pasok and Potami, so he is apparently banking on an outright win (or at least pretending to).  I doubt "all or nothing" will work this time around.

Supreme Court President Vassiliki Thanou serves as interim Prime Minister until the election - first female PM in Greece.

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A bunch of polls came out.  All of them had Syriza with a 1%-3% lead over ND and ANEL not making it past 3% threshold (although ANEL tend to under-poll.)    None of them have any chance of Sryiza-ANEL getting a majority even if ANEL makes it past 3%.  Since Tsipras ruled out working with ND, PASOK and Potami post-election and if Syriza is the largest party, then the only way out is another election of Tsipras moves aside for a grand coalition to be led by someone else from Syriza.

Or - more likely - Tsipras eating his own words.

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Zoe K. has said she is starting her own party after the dissolution of parliament.

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/08/26/former-greeces-house-speaker-to-start-new-party/

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Any news from Movement of Democratic Socialists?  Are they merging back into PASOK or at least form a joint list with PASOK ?

No. KIDISO demanded more influence on the joint list than PASOK was willing to give them.

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PASOK and DIMAR will run together as the Democratic Coalition.

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PASOK and DIMAR will run together as the Democratic Coalition.

BK pointed out it is the fourth consecutive election where PASOK doesn't run as PASOK.

I think DIMAR image-wise would have been better of teaming up with KIDISO; but apparently Papandreou has too big an ego to offer them a proper deal.

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PASOK and DIMAR will run together as the Democratic Coalition.

Smart move.  I have no idea why KIDISO does not join this.  It seems to be if the first time around in Jan KIDISO cannot cross 3% then then why would KIDISO voters even vote for KIDISO this time since it will be a wasted vote.  They will vote PASOK-DIMAR.  This shift will easily overwhelm any drift, if any, to KIDISO.  I guess  Papandreou's ego is just too big.

KIDISO was already dissatisfied with the number of seats offered by PASOK in their previous negotiations and with DIMAR candidates on the list there will be even fewer sloths on offer.

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ANTARSYA has decided not to run on a joint list with Popular Unity, but two Maoist micro-groups (ARAN and ARAS) have left ANTARSYA to run on the Popular Unity list.

Zoe K. is currently announcing her new party at a monster 3 hour press conference.

Meanwhile DIMAR is quarreling about whether the decision to team up with PASOK was legitimate or a coup! Fotis Kouvelis says the people willing to join the Democratic Coalition are traitors and sell-outs.

EDIT: Zoe K. is running as an indie on Popular Unity's list list. A bit disappointing, but this political soap opera should still be pretty entertaining.

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Fotis Kouvelis has now endorsed Syriza.

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KIDISO has decided not to run. It was (of course..) Papandreou's personal decision, which apparently surprised his colleagues. He cites lack of money to "fight with dignity" in the election as the main reason + bad polls.

He vows to fight on and "strengthen our movement to become a catalyst for the reconstruction of the progressive sector in order to serve effectively and consistently the interests of the Greek people and the country." Talk about being delusional.

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Seems fairly accurate except for Syriza, which has been pushed downwards.

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ND close to overtaking Syriza in new Alco poll:

SYRIZA: 23.0%
ND: 22.6%
XA: 6.1%
Potami: 4.1%
KKE: 5.5%
ANEL: 2.0%
PASOK: 4.2%
Popular Unity: 3.9%
Union of Centrists: 3.6%
Others: 3.5%

Blanks: 2.2%
Abstain: 5.0%
Undecided: 14.0%

Seat projection:

Syriza 129   
ND 77
XA 21   
Potami 15   
KKE 19   
Pasok 14   
Union of Centrists 12   
Popular Unity 13

[politicus]

SYRIZA will lose. Even his MPs seem resigned to that reality and are going through the motions of defending the previous government's record.
They have nothing to sell anymore and every day we see reports about massive defections to LAE.

As much as I despise Sryiza and Tsipras this seems to be bad news.  If a ND government comes into power we will have a re-run of 2013-2014 where ND will try to carry out reforms but Sryiza will snipe from the opposition.  It is better to make Syriza own the deal they signed and carry it out.

Only this time SYRIZA will have no credibility criticizing the implementation of a program they negotiated and voted for.
Besides that, they have already clarified that they will support, more or less, the new program even if they lose the election.

Switch the bonus and you get a centre-right majority of ND, Potami and Union of Centrists.

Don't get fooled. Union of Centrists is a joke party headed by a man with clear mental issues that makes Beppe Grillo look like a real statesman.
No serious party will ever even think to hold any kind of talks and legitimize them.

Yeah, I actually know that, but it just slipped my mind. You have so many crazies in Greek politics, it is hard to remember all of them (at least when you stop following it for a year or so, like I did).



Vassilis Leventis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-K5GMKOsWU

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Switch the bonus and you get a centre-right majority of ND, Potami and Union of Centrists.

Isn't ND-Potami-PASOK much more workable and easier? I believe the Union of Centrists has a stated ambition of becoming SYRIZA's junior partner in a coalition.

Yeah, yeah. See px post above (I have already been called out for that brainfart).

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LAOS has announced they are not running either this time. So one less micro-party on the ballot.

SYRIZA's chief spokesperson now says they're willing to work with PASOK and Potami. New tunes.

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LAOS has announced they are not running either this time. So one less micro-partyo on the ballot.

This probably benefits ANEL?

Probably a tiny bit, but not much - and ANEL is likely tainted by being allied with Syriza. LAOS is practically irrelevant by now anyway.

Last time ND campaigned to the right on immigration and law & order and got a lot of former LAOS supporters. There is a bloc of floating right wingers that both ND and ANEL could theoretically get, but not sure how much Syriza hurts ANEL among right wingers outside of their core audience. px might know, but it is a "niche-market".

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LAOS has announced they are not running either this time. So one less micro-party on the ballot.

This probably benefits ANEL?

Probably a tiny bit, but not much - and ANEL is likely tainted by being allied with Syriza. LAOS is practically irrelevant by now anyway.

Last time ND campaigned to the right on immigration and law & order and got a lot of former LAOS supporters. There is a bloc of floating right wingers that both ND and ANEL could theoretically get, but not sure how much Syriza hurts ANEL among right wingers outside of their core audience. px might know, but it is a "niche-market".

ANEL is hurt not so much because of its collaboration with SYRIZA per se. They are hurt because despite all their anti-austerity hysteria (Kammenos went so far to ask his supporters to lynch a PASOK MP who voted for the first package in 2010), eventually they too voted for the new program.

Agreed. ANEL voters are likely mad they voted for the bailout. If they didn't want to support a SYRIZA coalition, they wouldn't have voted ANEL in the first place, since joining SYRIZA's coalition was a big part of their campaign.

Sure, but the group we (Helsinkian and I) were talking about was not ANEL voters, but the (very) few remaining LAOS voters + the group of former LAOS voters and other right wing Conservative SoCons/nationalists etc. The group identified by ND strategists as the "floating right wingers" last time.

It is obvious why ANEL voters are leaving them, the question is if they can get enough others to join them to pass the threshold.

(I dont think so, but it would be interesting to hear px view and he seemed to just talk about ANEL in general)