Greek election - January 25th 2015

[Velasco]

Did you count a poll conducted by Public Issue released today in Agvi?

The result, as referenced in eldiario.es, is quite similar to your average: Syriza 35.5% (144 seats), ND 30.5% (81), To Potami and KKE 7% each, XA 6.5%, PASOK 5%, ANEL 3% and KDS 2%. Syriza is down from 38% and 151 seats last Sunday and ND up from 30% and 80 seats (virtually the same). XA and KKE advance with regard the previous poll.

[politicus]

Regarding the extreme parties it is worth remembering that the biggest group of undecideds describe themselves as centrists and that middle aged women are overrepresented, not the most likely group to vote radical. Most likely the centrist parties will do a bit better than the polls show. This seems most likely with Potami given their lack of bagage. I wouldn't be surprised if Potami does 2% better than the poll average. They seem to be just the kind of party our average undecided 35-44 year old low info female voter would pick in the voting booth.

[Zanas]

Did you count a poll conducted by Public Issue released today in Agvi?

The result, as referenced in eldiario.es, is quite similar to your average: Syriza 35.5% (144 seats), ND 30.5% (81), To Potami and KKE 7% each, XA 6.5%, PASOK 5%, ANEL 3% and KDS 2%. Syriza is down from 38% and 151 seats last Sunday and ND up from 30% and 80 seats (virtually the same). XA and KKE advance with regard the previous poll.

Yeah I included this one too. To be fair my methodology is simplistic : I gathered the ten latest polls from this page.

Public Issue seems prone to produce outliers though : Syriza's 38% last week was clearly one, and so is KKE's 7% this time. Even 35.5% is the second highest they got from any of the ten pollsters listed in my average.

[You kip if you want to...]

Regarding the extreme parties it is worth remembering that the biggest group of undecideds describe themselves as centrists and that middle aged women are overrepresented, not the most likely group to vote radical. Most likely the centrist parties will do a bit better than the polls show.

Also likely that the far-right under poll because... far-right.

[politicus]

Regarding the extreme parties it is worth remembering that the biggest group of undecideds describe themselves as centrists and that middle aged women are overrepresented, not the most likely group to vote radical. Most likely the centrist parties will do a bit better than the polls show. This seems most likely with Potami given their lack of bagage. I wouldn't be surprised if Potami does 2% better than the poll average. They seem to be just the kind of party our average undecided 35-44 year old low info female voter would pick in the voting booth.

Also likely that the far-right under poll because... far-right.

It looks like Golden Dawn genuinely are down to their core. They have been exposed as a criminal organization and with ND being tougher on immigration and law and order and ANEL still being around you really need to be very racist and authoritarian to go that way. I doubt they under poll much this time. LAOS doesn't seem to have much of a stigma attached to them and they are very marginal anyway.

[politicus]

There is of course also the possibility that the undecideds simply stay home. What kind of turnout we can expect is one of the things I am really unsure about.

[politicus]

A group of political analysts have done a meta analysis (which includes some weighing of the polling data) from the 13 polls conducted January 7-15 by MARC, METRON ANALYSIS, MRB, PALMOS, KAPPA RESEARCH, PUBLIC ISSUE, DATA, the University of Macedonia, RASS, PULSE and ΑLCO (which are apparently the ones considered methodologically reliable).

The result is:

SYRIZA 34.7%

New Democracy 30.2%

Potami 7.0%

Golden Dawn 6.2%

KKE 5.6%

PASOK 4.7%

ANEL 3%

Movement of Democratic Socialists 2.6%

Other 6.0 %
---------------------
Undecided 10.9%

Abstentions 4.1%

The polls conducted in that time span listed in Wiki. The pollsters used in bold.

14–15 Jan To the Point
14–15 Jan Rass
14–15 Jan Interview
12–15 Jan Palmos Analysis    
10–15 Jan Public Issue    
13–14 Jan Pulse RC
12–13 Jan Metrisi
11–13 Jan Alco
11–12 Jan Rass
10–12 Jan PaMak
9–11 Jan    Interview
9 Jan    MRB    
7–9 Jan    Data RC    
7–9 Jan    Alco   
7–9 Jan    Metrisi    
6–9 Jan    Pulse RC   
2–9 Jan    Public Issue   
7–8 Jan    E-Voice
7–8 Jan    Kapa Research
7–8 Jan    Rass
5–8 Jan    Metron Analysis
5–8 Jan    Marc
5–8 Jan    Palmos Analysis

The info I got that E-Voice is junk seems confirmed by this. Interview, PaMak, Metrisi and To the Point have also been disregarded by the experts.

[politicus]

Papandreou want a referendum on a new agreement between Greece and the lenders... Given how it went the first time that is truly bizarre.

http://www.thetoc.gr/eng/politics/article/george-papandreou-asks-for-a-referendum-again

"The times may have moved on, but George Papandreou apparently has not."

[Famous Mortimer]

Asking for a referendum was just a half assed way of rejecting austerity the first time around.

Now it makes even less sense. You aren't in power. You aren't going to win. You don't have to soften your stance to appease Europe. Just come out and say you're against austerity.

[politicus]

Syriza wants to raise  the minimum wage from 540 euro to 751 euro, which will also increase minimum unemployment benefits - since they are 80% of salaries. Unemployment is pt. stuck just over 25%. Youth unemployment is around 60%.

Their economic program further includes:

- Re-orient the public sector towards welfare and education and hire new workers in those sectors. There are 50% fewer people working in education and healthcare compared with five years ago, due to a limit of one person hired for every 10 that retired.

- Getting banks that have undergone recapitalization back under state control and fire (incompetent) old managers that have been allowed to stay despite public money used to bail out the banks. Using state banks to provide liquidity to small and medium size businesses.

- To facilitate credit to young people who want to set up businesses "with a strong social ethics" (low-cost food, green tech, publishing, media, everything increasing "knowledge capital")

- Renegotiation of the Memorandum (that makes loans conditional on budget cuts and reforms) incl. debt reduction.

http://www.thetoc.gr/eng/politics/article/syrizas-first-act-in-office-raise-minimum-wage

[politicus]

Health Minister Makis Voridis from the ND right wing has the provoked an outcry with some very controversial civil war style rhetoric:

"Our generation will not surrender the country to the Left. We will not let them, no matter what it is that we will have to do!"

"That which our grandfathers defended bravely with guns, we will defend with our vote on Sunday. So that we all know what we're talking about."

He also called the election  "a massive ideological collision between the world of freedom and the homeland, between the values of the homeland, religion and family which we represent and the levelling which is represented by the Left".

Voridis’s conscious choice to phrase the election in terms that recall the civil war is considered provocative and dangerous by many.

This image is re-enforced by Voridis’ background. He led the youth wing of EPEN, a far right party founded by the leader of the 1967 coup Georgios Papadopoulos. After it folded in 1996 he founded the Hellenic Front modeled on Front National and established close ties with Jean Marie Le Pen. When it failed Voridis became a member of LAOS, entering the coalition government with that party in 2011. In 2012 Voridis left the collapsing LAOS and joined ND.

SYRIZA has condemned his comments and accused Voridis of using divisive rhetoric reminiscent of the civil war and using slogans of the military dictatorship. They also want Samaras to "provide explanations".

Interesting how far Samaras will allow his own right wingers to go in order to scoop up the voters left homeless after the exposure of Golden Dawn and partial collapse of ANEL. It could backfire and send moderate centre-right voters to Potami (or the couch).

[politicus]

Voridis at the congress of Parti de la France, an anti-Marine FN breakaway founded in 2009 by Carl Lang.



For those knowledgeable of French politics: I assume Lang broke with FN because he didn't like Marine le Pen and the modernizers "going soft"?

[politicus]

Worst election add so far from a major party (with English subtitles). ND trying to humanize Samaras by showing him with awestruck football boys. Totally natural..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrpxeKef2R8#t=27

"If a country wants to play ball it needs a stadium. We are building that stadium"


ANEL is going with Kammenos teaching a cute boy (symbolically named Alexis..) how to run a model train:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPDo5MnwhOI


Both adds translated by the guy who run this excellent blog:

http://whenthecrisish**tthefan.com/


Lots of snarky comments to them on #greekelections incl.: https://twitter.com/OmairaGill/status/554728370098167808/photo/1

And everything will obviously suddenly change to the better if you vote Syriza.. (still more classic and less lame)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT9VkjxXRzY

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I like discussing politics and all, but really my main passion is for bizarre election ads, so I thank you for that politicus.

Could they have made Samaras look any more creepy?

And that second one is really strange as well. I can't make much sense of the train metaphor, knowing what I know about ANEL. I also enjoyed the boy's hilariously pithy responce ("well it turns out you were actually vaguely helpful!")

"Necessary Good" is a terrible slogan, but maybe it comes across better in Greek.

[politicus]

I like discussing politics and all, but really my main passion is for bizarre election ads, so I thank you for that politicus.

Could they have made Samaras look any more creepy?

And that second one is really strange as well. I can't make much sense of the train metaphor, knowing what I know about ANEL. I also enjoyed the boy's hilariously pithy responce ("well it turns out you were actually vaguely helpful!")

"Necessary Good" is a terrible slogan, but maybe it comes across better in Greek.

The boy is very symbolically named Alexis, so Kammenos is the competent "uncle" that will teach the children in Syriza how to keep Greece on the track (to a better future). He is the necessary good uncle that will make sure an anti-austerity victory doesn't end in a leftist trainwreck.

So a corrective and guide for a Syriza government (which seems far fetched at this point).

ANEL is in a strange place because the party is basically useless even if they get in. They can not work with ND because of austerity and they are too small, too right wing and too crazy for Syriza. But they still need to convince some voters that it makes sense to vote for them, so apparently they try to pretend that the old anti-austerity ties from 2010-12 still exist.

[politicus]

This one is also interesting because it illustrates the scaremongering tone of ND's campaign. ND claims that Syriza can't protect the Greeks because they will disarm the police, abolish maximum security prisons for terrorists and "unregulate" immigration.  "Syriza will unfortify Greece". Starts with a Je suis Charlie-sign of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALuYIUJkQ4w

[justfollowingtheelections]

I was just watching some of the videos on that guy's account and this one would have been hilarious if unemployment wasn't such an enormous problem for young Greeks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5RGJrU_kSY

As he says:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[politicus]

Syriza's lead widens here in the final week according to three polls published yesterday and today.

University of Macedonia gives them a 6.5% lead. Up from 4.5%. Syriza: 33.5% - ND 27%

Alco gives them a 4.6% lead. Up from 3.5% last week. Syriza: 33.1% vs. ND 28.5%

GPO gives them 4.0%. Up from 3.2% two weeks ago.  Syriza 30.4%. ND 26.4%

[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?

[politicus]

Tsipras frees the dove on Epiphany.. pretty cool picture in a way.





Syriza has been trying to play down their reputation for atheism and Tsipras has visited monasteries and met with religious leaders. ND still claims all icons will be removed from public buildings and schools if the godless left wins, but it doesn't look like Syriza is going French style  laïcité. Would also be a foolish distraction from the real problems, but some of their more true leftist members are apparently not too happy about the leadership going soft on the church. It will be interesting if they will try to redistribute church land as they have promised earlier. I actually doubt it.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Hey Charlotte, why do you call him Tsirapas?  Is your computer auto-correcting you or is it something else?  I'm just curious

[Philip Weisler]

It's kinda funny that someone would label ANEL as ''too crazy'' for SYRIZA. The former is an anti-austerity break-away from the mainstream conservatives, the latter a break-away from the Communist Party and still harbors people and factions that openly advocate Communism of various tendencies (Maoists, Trotskyists etc.).

Of course, there is the immigration issue, however, I firmly refuse to beg pardon for my view, that controlling open-borders immigration is not necessarily bad.

[justfollowingtheelections]

It's kinda funny that anyone would label ANEL as ''too crazy'' for SYRIZA. The former is an anti-austerity break-away from the mainstream conservatives, the latter a break-away from the Communist Party that still includes people who openly advocate Communism in a variety of its tendencies (Maoists, Trotskyists etc.). 

SYRIZA is a break-away from KKE?  That's news to me.  I don't mean to offend you but you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.  And yes Kammenos is a clown. 

[Philip Weisler]

Sorry, but I do know what I'm talking about. The main faction of today's SYRIZA (formed in 2004) is Synaspismos, which emerged as a coalition of communist movements (the biggest components were the two Greek Communist Parties) in the 1980s. The KKE left the coalition in 1991 as Neo-Stalinists took this party over.

Of course this is simplified,  but (most of) SYRIZA represents the more eurocommunist tendency of the Greek Communist movement. You can read about it on Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_Left,_of_Movements_and_Ecology#Coalition.2C_late_1980s.E2.80.931991).

It's kinda funny that anyone would label ANEL as ''too crazy'' for SYRIZA. The former is an anti-austerity break-away from the mainstream conservatives, the latter a break-away from the Communist Party that still includes people who openly advocate Communism in a variety of its tendencies (Maoists, Trotskyists etc.).  

SYRIZA is a break-away from KKE?  That's news to me.  I don't mean to offend you but you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.  And yes Kammenos is a clown.  

[Filuwaúrdjan]

They were the moderate/sane wing of the Commies, yes.