Greece 2012

[Bacon King]

Not to interrupt the discussion, but coalition news:

-Samaras says he'll probably conclude exploratory mandate tomorrow, success or failure
-ANEL refused to even enter talks with ND
-Syriza very eager to attempt an anti-austerity coalition, even saying he'll allow Commie Alexa to be Prime Minister, and saying he'll accept support from ANEL. Not likely to go anywhere, of course.

[Bacon King]

For the record, here's the final results with 100% in.

Turnout:         65.10%
Valid votes:    97.64%
Invalid votes:   1.80%
Blank votes:     0.55%


Final margin between ND and SYRIZA: 2.07%

ND:	108	18.85%
SYRIZA:	52	16.78%
PASOK:	41	13.18%
ANEL:	33	10.60%
KKE:	26	8.48%
XA:	21	6.97%
DIMAR:	19	6.11%
(total below threshold)		(19.03%)
Greens:		2.93%
LAOS:		2.90%
DISY:		2.55%
DX!:		2.15%
Drasi:		1.80%
ANTARSYA:		1.19%
(parties <1%)		(5.43%)

[Bacon King]

BREAKING FROM AP (if not entirely expected): ND leader Samaras announces he is unable to form a coalition government.

So Syriza is up to bat tomorrow; let's see what they can do!

edit- my internet weirded out and it took me five minutes to make this post, so I got ninja'd by jaichind

[Bacon King]

In other news, here's an amusing bit of sensationalism from Forbes.

Highlights:

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[Bacon King]

A pity the greens didn't get in.

I'm positively surprised the turnout didn't dwindle that much. Unless 65% is unusually low for Greece, but I doubt it is.

It is, actually. Lowest Greek turnout for legislative elections in modern times. Voting is mandatory in Greece, and although there are no penalties enforced against non-voters, I think that still boosts participation somewhat. Greek turnout has historically been stable at around 80% (even through the 89-89-90 election trio). Over the two decades it's fallen some, usually been around 75%. 2009 was the lowest turnout since the dictatorship at 'only' 71%.

Who do you think will gain from a new election? Establishment or new parties?

I don't see how the establishment could benefit from all of this, though I suppose anything is possible.

[Bacon King]

Tsipras scheduled to officially get his exploratory mandate at 2PM tomorrow. Odds he'll make it to Wednesday before giving up?

[Bacon King]

Tsipras scheduled to officially get his exploratory mandate at 2PM tomorrow. Odds he'll make it to Wednesday before giving up?

(This definitely overcomplicates things, but I'm in an overcomplicating mood.)

No party has agreed to work with ND (except PASOK, but all they referred to is a "government of national unity"). Two parties have not definitively rejected cooperation with SYRIZA: PASOK and DIMAR. Let's say they cooperate and get 112 seats.

SYRIZA will still need cooperation from right-wing ANEL and Stalinist KKE. That will not happen. But SYRIZA can take the whole three days, and by the end blame those two parties for not cooperating. All this is to suck votes from KKE and ANEL sympathizers in the following election so they edge over ND.

I would say SYRIZA is most eager for an election right now. They can gain votes from new KKE voters who realizes that their votes can make more of a difference with SYRIZA, as well as votes from all those parties not in parliament. There's around 8-9% of votes for anti-austerity parties who did not get into parliament ripe for the picking.

SYRIZA will still need cooperation from right-wing ANEL and Stalinist KKE. That will not happen. But SYRIZA can take the whole three days, and by the end blame those two parties for not cooperating. All this is to suck votes from KKE and ANEL sympathizers in the following election so they edge over ND.

Not cooperating in forming a presumably pro-austerity coalition with PASOK and DIMAR? After all they're conflicting with SYRIZA on that, so either one has to have an enormous Damascene conversion if they're to form just that coalition, and if it's 1) PASOK & DIMAR that have had that conversion they may as well force another election to unite the left behind them, or 2) SYRIZA that's done it, then if anything SYRIZA will be losing votes to KKE, and possibly ANEL, for that betrayal and will receive no sympathy for not being able to form a coalition with the two parties who stuck to their principles.

I think SYRIZA will naturally gain votes from elsewhere, just by being hot on the heels of New Democracy - and the anti-austerity voters will have seen that (and recognise it as their best hope).

   

Good analysis from the both of you, but I doubt anyone is going to be losing votes to the Stalinists under any circumstance. Just not how that party operates.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Bacon King]

Venizelos meeting with ND in the morning. If Kouvelis is truly as supportive as it sounds, looks like we might actually see a government form tomorrow.

[Bacon King]

If something like that happens then the first thing I'll do next day is to go to the bank and withdraw my deposits.

Actually I might do it even earlier, before the election. I'll avoid the stampede.

You should do it before. There may will be a general run on the banks within hours.

Actually I was just speaking with a friend who works in finance. He said to me that there is a non-negligible possibility that in case SYRIZA seems to be in striking distance of forming a government without the help of pro-bailout parties, the military might intervene. It won't be exactly a coup, the temporary government will invoke extreme circumstances, it will declare that the country is under siege and will suspend some articles of the constitution until the situation calms down. All this of course will happen with the tacit approval of the EU.

Imagine where we are and how we feel now that we are talking seriously about something like that.

What you are describing clearly is a coup.

No because this procedure is laid out in our constitution. It can be retroactively approved by the parliament if it's not in session at the time it happens.

Articles 44 and 48 allow for Parliament to be temporarily bypassed "under extraordinary circumstances of an urgent and unforeseeable need" and in "case of war... or an imminent threat against national security, as well as in case of an armed coup aiming to overthrow the democratic regime" respectively, (the latter only when it's "objectively impossible" to convene Parliament in time) but both can only be declared by the President at the Cabinet's initiative. No mechanism for military involvement. The available time limit is also incredibly limited, with Article 48 requiring Parliamentary consent within fifteen days, and Article 44 requires decrees to be submitted for Parliament's approval within forty days.

The military stepping in directly would certainly be unconstitutional; the only legal "option" to prevent a Syriza government would involve the outgoing Cabinet declaring a national emergency under Article 44 Paragraph 1 just before they were officially replaced, and then have Papoulias postpone the commencement of Parliament for a month under Article 40 Paragraph 2&3 so the new anti-austerity cabinet couldn't take office. And even then, after that month PASOK/ND would be absolutely hated, with the appearance of illegitimately clinging to power, and the electoral repercussions would be disastrous. But to do it any other way would probably be treason.

(Unless I'm overlooking something or the translation I found of the Greek Constitution is bad, anyway)

[Bacon King]

Of course, just playing devil's advocate here, whatever signals of tacit approval that potentially get sent in favor of a coup-if-necessary could just be the Troika hedging their bets. If Greece's military becomes "needed" the austerity deal will be effectively unsalvageable anyway, so it'd be Germany's perfect excuse to kick Greece out of the Eurozone and wash their hands of everything.     

[Bacon King]

It's the procedure outlined in the Constitution.
Anyways, DIMAR-ND-PASOK, with a DIMAR PM is the proposal of PASOK, now. Only the approval of ND is needed.

And PASOK's talking with ND at this very moment, so presumably we'll hear fairly quickly whether a tentative coalition is workable.

Honestly, though, I'm not sure if DIMAR's entirely on board as much as Venizelos is making it out to be:

http://www.euractiv.com/euro-finance/venizelos-holds-break-talks-greece-news-512640

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Sounds to me like Kouvelis is hedging a bit, and wants to see what the actual coalition agreement would look like. He's also probably worried that half of his caucus would jump back over to Syriza if DIMAR joins a government with nobody else but ND and PASOK. It's possible Venizelos trumped up yesterday's meeting so much just to pressure DIMAR against backing out.

[Bacon King]

Here's some definite good news, at least: The EU will continue funding Greece until they have a government, even if new elections are needed.

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[Bacon King]

So would they keep passing the coalition forming ability down the party rank until it Communists, and then even Fascist get a shot at it? That could be some serous shenanigans.

No. Only the first three parties get the chance to explore if there is a possibility to form a coalition government.

Up to four parties, hypothetically, if two of them are tied in seat count

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Well, the Constitution says the President summons all parties, but the precedent from 1989 was that only the three biggest parties were invited. That gives Papoulias enough leeway to get away with ignoring Golden Dawn, I'd think, but no reason he'd not invite any of the other parties.

[Bacon King]

Syriza would still get the fifty seat bonus; they're a "party" for the purposes of electoral law as long as Syriza's leader declares it to be so to the electoral commission.

Edit- and even if they didn't for some reason do so, the fifty seat bonus wouldn't apply and all 300 seats would be allocated proportionally IIRC; it wouldn't go to ND.

[Bacon King]

Syriza would still get the fifty seat bonus; they're a "party" for the purposes of electoral law as long as Syriza's leader declares it to be so to the electoral commission.

Edit- and even if they didn't for some reason do so, the fifty seat bonus wouldn't apply and all 300 seats would be allocated proportionally IIRC; it wouldn't go to ND.

Are you sure about that?  I got my info from a Greek poster on another forum.

I don't remember my initial source, but here's confirmation of my interpretation by our forum's own Greek poster:

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.

[Bacon King]

A Chief Justice will be appointed tomorrow to lead a caretaker government.

In other news: newest poll, from some company called Rass.

SYRIZA: 20.5%
ND: 19.4%
PASOK: 11.8%
ANEL: 7.8%
DIMAR: 6.2%
KKE: 4.8%
XA: 3.8%
[threshold: 3%]
DISY 2.4%
DX: 2.3%
LAOS: 2.0%
Greens: 1.8%

others: 3.7%
undecided: 11.3%

That's a lot of parties near the threshold, and it's refreshing to see Golden Dawn polling so low. It looks like ND might have a chance to keep the fifty bonus seats if undecideds on the right coalesce around them to a greater extent than leftist undecideds do so for SYRIZA.

[Bacon King]

If Syriza takes power it's not like they'll commit national economic suicide rather than look like hypocrites, if they had no other option. They're led by a shrewd politician who, if nothing else, certainly realizes at least that being single-handedly responsible for triple digit inflation doesn't bode well in terms of future electoral prospects. 

[Bacon King]

I've taken a look at the polls so far; here's a bit of analysis:

• I don't think you can really conclude that PASOK is rising. Their differing results appears to mostly be pollsters' different methodologies being applied. All three firms that have released two polls in the last two weeks all show PASOK essentially stable. So, while no poll agrees on how well PASOK is actually polling, it appears to be statistical noise rather than anything else.
• SYRIZA is definitely up from their result in May. The different methodologies, however, muddle one from seeing whatever trend exists. The two firms that had them in the high twenties a week ago are showing big declines now, while if you exclude those results there appears to be a steady increase from 20% to around 22% for SYRIZA.
• I have no idea what's going on with ND. Marc/Alpha is showing them up 2.8% while Metron is showing them down 2%, in pretty much the same time frame. All pollsters generally agree that ND is polling somewhere around 22% though, plus or minus a couple of points; their results are definitely more stable between pollsters than most other parties (especially SYRIZA).
• ANEL and KKE are definitely losing support. This is notable because pretty much everyone overestimated KKE in the May polls.
• XA is certainly losing support, but I worry that there might be some sort of "shy Nazi" effect, where some prospective Golden Dawn voters don't want to admit who they support to a random phone caller. I wish I could read Greek to really look into this; I'd love to see if there's a disparity in Golden Dawn support between live-call and automated pollsters.
• Remember that in May pretty much every pollster significantly overestimated ND and PASOK, while seriously underestimating SYRIZA. I assume they've all corrected the way they assign undecideds now, but I have no actual evidence of that (again, I wish I could read Greek! ).

[Bacon King]

Of those two polls, note that the former pollster tries to predict undecideds by determining how they lean, while the latter just reports undecideds like a US poll would. So it looks like there's like 25% undecided, most of them on the left (if you compare with the first poll).

[Bacon King]

Don't have computer access unfortunately, just skimming through everything with my phone, but it's interesting to see SYRIZA basically replacing PASOK (and PASOK replacing KKE) in a manner reminiscent of Greece's old two-and-a-half party system.

Never got to post my analysis of the last polls; these results are similar to what I was expecting, though I was thinking there'd be a closer margin. Wouldn't be surprised to see SYRIZA close the gap a bit with late returns, though, just like they did last month. 

[Bacon King]

I believe that should there be a third election, Dimar voters would "vote utile" for Syriza, at least a number of them, in order to get Syriza the majority premium of 50 seats. So Dimar has their last shot at being in charge with a nice parliamentary group...

Not only that- if Dimar didn't enter government, they'd probably lose a lot of their moderate voters to PASOK.