Econintersect: After winning the top spot in the Greek election Sunday 17 June 2012, the New Democracy Party (ND) has to lead the effort to form a new 
government. With only 29.6% of the vote and 129 seats in the 300 seat parliament, ND will need some help. That help is not likely to come from close second place finisher, the Coalition of the Radical Left or Syriza Party, which pulled in 26.9%. Syriza leader, Alexis Tsipras has said his party would not join any ND led coalition. (See more below.) The third place socialist PASOK Party, which has ruled Greece for the past 40 years in collaboration with the conservative ND party, received 12.3% of the vote. According to The Telegraph, parties that opposed the austerity program instituted by the previous government as a condition for a Greek bail out received 46% of the vote, more than the combined total (41.3%) for ND and PASOK.
With 129 seats ND could form a thin majority coalition government with PASOK (33 parliament seats) to give a total of 162 seats against a combined opposition with 138 votes. It seems likely however that more parties will be needed involved to make the coalition robust enough to withstand the fractious environment that is widespread in Greece.
As mentioned previously, the 71 seats won by the Syriza party are unlikely to join the coalition. From The Telegraph:
Alexis Tsipras, the Syriza leader, said he would help the government if it took measures to alleviate the burden on the people. “But it must understand that austerity measures and the selling off of public wealth cannot be imposed,” he said. “Anti-austerity is the only viable solution.” Any New Democracy-led government will be under intense pressure to renegotiate the terms of Greece’s bail-out to stave off another political collapse and civil unrest.
Econintersect has attempted to find what the actual vote totals and parliamentary seats won by each party, but has not found a complete set of data. Here is what we have as of 1:12 am 18 June 2012 combining information from The Huffington Post and The Telegraph:
- New Democracy, 29.6% of the vote, 129 seats
- Syriza, 26.9% of the vote, 71 seats
- PASOK, 12.3% of the vote, 33 seats
- Independent Greeks, 7.6% of the vote, number of seats unknown
- Golden Dawn, 6.9% of the vote, 7 seats
- Democratic Left, 6.3% of the vote, number of seats unknown
- Communist Party, 4.5% of the vote, no seats (5% of the vote required to win parliament seats)
This total equals 94.1% of the vote. Presumably the remaining 5.9% was split between smaller minority parties.
The turnout for this election was 62%. Some of the 38% not voting may have been kept from the polls because of bad weather. Islanders who had to travel by boat to reach polling places may have been prevented from doing that by high winds.
Here is a graphic from The Telegraph that shows the distribution of votes indicated by exit polls compared to the May 6 election:
Sources:
- Greece election leaves Europe in balance (Robert Winnett, Alex Spillius and Bruno Waterfield, The Telegraph, 17 June 2012)
- Greek Election Results: New Democracy Wins (Demtras Nellas and Elana Toros, Huffington Post, 17 June 2012)
- Greece Exit Polls: New Democracy Winning a Near Tie (GEI News, 17 June 2012)
