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The 2014 Local Elections in Greece:Looking for Patterns in a ChangingPolitical SystemYannis TsirbasPublished online: 15 Jan 2015.

To cite this article: Yannis Tsirbas (2015): The 2014 Local Elections in Greece: Lookingfor Patterns in a Changing Political System, South European Society and Politics, DOI:10.1080/13608746.2014.1002555

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The 2014 Local Elections in Greece:Looking for Patterns in a ChangingPolitical SystemYannis Tsirbas

In May 2014, municipal and regional elections were held in Greece, concurrently with

European elections. This was the first electoral test after the 2012 twin earthquakeelections, which marked the beginning of a radical restructuring of the Greek political

system. The fragmentation and inconsistency of voting behaviour across different polls in2014 indicate that Greek politics remains in a transitional phase whose final outcome is

still contested. Other characteristics of the elections, including the high proportion ofindependent candidates, the radical renewal of political personnel and the emergenceof Berlusconism in two major municipalities, underline the continuing lack of legitimacy

of the political system.

Keywords: Local Government Elections; Greece; New Democracy; SYRIZA; PASOK;Golden Dawn

The 2014 local government elections, held simultaneously with the EuropeanParliament elections, marked the first electoral contest in Greece after the twin

earthquake parliamentary elections of 2012. In Greece, local elections are never reallylocally isolated and always bear importance for the national political scene

(Moschonas 2003, p. 107). Especially after the massive dealignment and restructuringinitiated in 2012, the local elections of 2014 were a test of where significant players in

Greek politics, old and new, stood in terms of electoral influence. The questions thispaper aims to address include who were the winners and losers of the local elections,

the implications of the results for the Greek political system as a whole and how theylinked to the special characteristics of Greek politics which have emerged in relation to

the economic crisis and the elections of 2012. The local elections of 2014 also havesome special features that are worth presenting and analysing.

q 2015 Taylor & Francis

South European Society and Politics, 2015

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2014.1002555

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Brief Theoretical Background

It is quite common for local elections studies to employ the well-known concept of

‘second-order’ elections (SOE), introduced in the seminal work of Reif and Schmitt

(1980) about the 1979 first European elections. The ‘second-order’ concept’s basic

assumption is that national elections constitute a first-order political arena, which

directly influences behaviour in second-order political arenas, like European or

regional elections. Hence, the latter elections are subordinate to national ones,

where stakes, namely the decision of who will govern, are higher. The main

hypotheses of the ‘less-at-stake’ model are that the turnout in this kind of election

is lower; small and new political parties have greater chances of receiving a higher

percentage of the votes; there will be more blank/invalid ballots; and the governing

parties will lose strength (Reif & Schmitt 1980, p. 9). Protest parties and radical

populist parties are also expected to be stronger in SOE (Reif 1997, p. 118). The key

explanatory variable for the degree to which the above developments take place –

especially those concerning party strength – is the position of SOE in the electoral

cycle: the further their distance from national elections, the stronger the ‘second-

order’ effects are and vice versa (Reif & Schmitt 1980, p. 10). Of course, specific

characteristics of SOE also play a role, as do political circumstances at a national

level. Undoubtedly, there are important issues in second-order political arenas as

well, while party platforms, specific candidates and campaigns are also important

(Reif & Schmitt 1980, p. 10).Regional and municipal elections are, of course, SOE but at the same time not all of

these contests are merely subordinate to national politics. Schakel and Jeffery, in their

study of 2,933 regional elections in 17 countries, have shown that the second-order

pattern is not entirely followed (Schakel & Jeffery 2013, p. 17) and that regional

elections can be elections ‘in their own terms’, thus identifying a ‘nationalising’ bias of

the classical assumptions for SOE. Also, in Britain in the past, local elections did not

always fully conform to the SOE model, compared with European elections, the

former being more significant than the latter (Heath et al. 1999). Similarly, in Greece,

both turnout and electoral results of prefectural elections, especially after 2002, were

steadily closer to those of national elections than of European ones, resulting in their

characterisation as ‘quasi-parliamentary’ (Mavris 2003, 2006, p. 133) rather than

second-order.

Therefore, local elections could either be quasi-parliamentary, second-order orelections ‘in their own terms’. Hence, the questions concerning the Greek local

elections of 2014 are as follows: did they ultimately have a national or local character?

Did they serve as a means for the Greek electorate to protest against governmental

policies? Was there a government–opposition polarisation? What were the gains and

losses of the government and opposition parties? Did smaller parties indeed perform

better, as the SOE model assumes? Did turnout decrease and blank/invalid ballots

increase compared with parliamentary elections? How did Greek voters deal with three

simultaneous elections?

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The Context of the Elections

The Political Situation

The 2014 local elections were held within a social and political context largely defined

by the economic crisis. In 2010, the single-party government of PASOK (PanellήnioSosialistikό Kίnhma [Panhellenic Socialist Movement]), led by Georgios

Papandreou, signed an international bailout agreement, accompanied by amemorandum of understanding or ‘mnimonio’ [mnhmόnio ]. The first memorandum

and a second one signed in February 2012, prescribed severe austerity measures anddrastic fiscal reforms. At the time of the 2014 elections, Greece was still facing greateconomic challenges. Recession continued with a further drop of 0.2 per cent of

output in the second quarter of 2014,1 adding to a total loss of 23.9 per cent of grossdomestic product (GDP) in 2007–13. Globally, this is the third biggest recession after

Canada and the United States (US) in 1929–33.2 Unemployment stood at 26.6 percent in the second quarter of 2014, slightly improved compared with 27.5 per cent in

2013 but almost three times the 9.6 per cent of 2009. Frequent strikes, protests anddemonstrations had occurred, especially in the first period of the implementation of

the austerity measures, as well as a fierce public debate concerning the necessity andscope of the memoranda. The mnimonio division (between political parties thatsupported the memoranda, on the one hand, and political parties that opposed them,

on the other), while not having the time to fully take shape and affect the 2010 localelections (Verney 2012), was the main issue of the 2012 parliamentary elections, acting

as the main voting criterion for around 60 per cent of the electorate (Koustenis 2014,p. 107). By this time, the centre-right ND (Nέa Dhmokratίa [New Democracy ]),

which had voted against the first memorandum, had joined the pro-mnimonio camp.In terms of the party system, the 2012 elections marked an abrupt end to a

bipartisanship that had lasted for more than three decades, when PASOK and NDalternated in power, usually receiving between them around 80 per cent of the votes.

In 2012, both parties hit historical lows. ND received 19 per cent of the votes(compared with 33 per cent in 2009) and PASOK finished third with 13 per cent

Table 1 Greek Parliamentary Election Results, 2009–12

June 2012 (%) May 2012 (%) 2009 (%)

ND 29.7 18.9 33.5SYRIZA 26.9 16.8 4.6PASOK 12.3 13.2 43.9ANEL 7.5 10.6 –GD 6.9 7.0 0.3DIMAR 6.3 6.1 –KKE 4.5 8.5 7.5Other 5.9 18.9 10.2

Source: Ministry of the Interior, www.ekloges.ypes.gr

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(44 per cent in 2009). Another significant player emerged in second place: SYRIZA(Synaspismό6 th6 Pizospastikή6 Aristerά6 [Coalition of the Radical Left]), with17 per cent (five per cent in 2009). Electoral volatility quadrupled, while the sum of thevotes of the two first parties was the lowest since 1926 (Stathopoulos 2014, p. 61).

In total, 60 per cent of the Greek electorate switched preferences between the nationalelections of October 2009 and May 2012, while more than half a million voters exited

the electorate (Voulgaris & Nikolakopoulos 2014, pp. 21–22). Of the four other partiesthat won seats in 2012, three entered Parliament for the first time, including neo-nazi

GD (Xrysή Aygή [Golden Dawn ])with seven per cent of the vote, its support comingmostly from alienated PASOK and ND voters, as well as newly enfranchised ones(Georgiadou 2013, p. 92). The other parliamentary parties were: the anti-

memorandum populist right-wing ANEL (Anejάrthtoi Ellhne6 [IndependentGreeks ]), founded less than three months before the elections, with 10.6 per cent; the

anti-memorandum KKE (Kommoynistikό Kόmma Ellάda6 [Greek CommunistParty]), the oldest Greek political party, with 8.5 per cent; and DIMAR (DhmokratikήAristerά [Democratic Left ]), a left-wing, pro-European party that split from SYRIZAin 2010, with 6.1 per cent. No government could be formed and new elections were held

in June 2012, with the same seven parties entering parliament and ND and SYRIZAincreasing their vote share by 11 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively (see Table 1). Thesecond election was followed by the formation of a coalition government between the

one-time adversaries ND and PASOK, including the participation of DIMAR, underND leader Antonis Samaras, who remained prime minister during the 2014 elections.

Hence, in 2012 politics became highly contentious and gained the shape of atriangular polarisation, with pro-bailout governmental forces, anti-bailout forces on

the left and anti-bailout but also xenophobic and isolationist forces on the right(Teperoglou & Tsatsanis 2014, p. 17). Moreover, the above developments ‘were built

on a deep and long-term loss of trust in political institutions, completely unlikeanything happening in the EU’ (Verney 2014, p. 33). This loss of trust preceded the

economic crisis, was exacerbated by it and was one of the dominant characteristics ofthe Greek political system at the time of the 2014 local elections. In 2014, themnimonio division was still present, albeit with some alterations in its content. By this

time, the main argument of the pro-memorandum governmental camp (comprisingND and PASOK after DIMAR’s withdrawal from the government in 2013) was that the

end of the crisis was near, when the Greek people’s sacrifices would pay off, and that allthat was needed was patience. The core argument of the anti-memorandum camp,

which included all the parliamentary opposition parties, was that the bailout measuresonly deepened the crisis and widened social inequalities, and there was no real

prospect of tackling the country’s debt unless a different economic policy was pursued.The 2014 local elections fell in the middle of the electoral cycle. However, it could be

argued that the electoral climate and public discourse somewhat resembled that of an

election held towards the end of the electoral cycle. This was due to the widelydiscussed possibility of an early national election in the case of a deadlock in the

parliamentary election of the president of the Republic3 due by March 2015. Two other

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factors also played a part in assigning a ‘national’ meaning to the local elections: thesimultaneous holding of European elections and the political strategy of SYRIZA.

The Institutional Framework

Local government in Greece is structured at two levels, consisting of 325 municipalitiesand 13 regions. This was only the second time that elections had been held at a

regional level since the major ‘Kallikrates’ reform of 2010 and the local elections of thatyear. Kallikrates reduced the number of municipalities from 1,033 while the second tier

of local government moved up from the 50 prefectures to the regions. The decrease inthe number of second-tier local government units and their corresponding

concentration, since each region consisted of two to seven prefectures, could onlyenhance their political significance at a national level. In the first regional elections of2010, under a surface of deceptive stability lay clear signs of the crisis of trust in

political institutions and the future restructuring of the Greek political system that wasto occur in 2012 (Verney 2012, p. 210).

Electoral law prescribes for both municipal and regional elections a majoritariansystem in two rounds: candidates may be elected in the first round with an absolute

majority or in a second round run-off between the two leading candidates. Partycandidacies are not officially allowed and in each local unit, whether a municipality or

a region, a separate list must be formed with its own name and logo. However, thepolitical leanings of the candidates as well as their party affiliations and endorsements

are widely known in local societies. The winning list receives two-thirds of councilseats in the municipalities and three-fifths in the regions. Traditionally, there has beenno use for post-election agreements in the local councils, and alliances are usually

formed prior to the election. However, between the first and second rounds, it iscommon for a lot of bargaining to take place between eliminated and finalist

candidates, while at the central level parties often have an explicit or implicit second-round strategy in cases where their candidates are not in the second round.

As predicted by classic laws of political science (Duverger 1951), the high 50 per centthreshold leads to candidates contesting the elections, even if they do not have a

realistic chance of winning, in order to influence developments and enter theaforementioned bargaining process, and it is also easier for party members who do notget official party support to run as rebel candidates. An outright win in the first round

occurred in only one of the 13 regions in 2014 and two in 2010 and in one-third ofmunicipalities in both 2014 (114/325) and 2010 (104/325).

Another aspect of the institutional context concerned the timing of the elections.The Kallikrates reform had decreed that, in future, local elections would be held

simultaneously with the European Parliament elections, for cost-cutting purposes.This also meant an increase in the local government term in office from four to five

years. However, before the 2014 elections, the governing majority passed a legislativeamendment moving the first round of the local elections one week earlier, so that the

European elections would coincide with the second round. This became a hotly

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contested issue, with opposition parties, academics and the mayors of Athens andThessaloniki all accusing the governing parties of electoral manipulation. The

argument was that if the predicted victory of SYRIZA occurred in the EuropeanParliament elections before the second round of the local government elections, voters

would be more likely to opt for anti-government candidates in the latter. However, itmay have worked the other way round: the fact SYRIZA did not do impressively well in

the first round of the local elections may have resulted in the mobilisation of itselectorate for the second round and for the European elections.

Party Strategies

In 2014, the Ministry of the Interior registered some kind of party affiliation, partyorigin or endorsement for only 45 out of 325 elected mayors. The respective numberfor 2010 was 150, while in previous elections the vast majority of candidates had some

kind of party affiliation either official, in the form of proper endorsement, orunofficial. Of course, a trend towards independent candidates had started to emerge as

early as 1998 (Lyrintzis 2000, p. 13), but at that time was rather marginal. In 2014, thephenomenon reached its peak so far. This is a clear reflection of the fluid situation of

the Greek political system, where being associated with a political party, especially agoverning party, has become a perceived disadvantage, in contrast to the practice for

many years, when prospective candidates at the local level strove to get official partysupport. This was evident at the party level as well. For instance, PASOK did not offer

any official endorsements, at either regional or municipal level, even though manycandidates were well-known members of the party or incumbents elected with officialPASOK support in 2010.

ND had a modest target of retaining or increasing the number of regions it had wonin 2010 and insisted on downplaying the national character that SYRIZAwas trying to

give to the local elections. SYRIZA’s strategy was epitomised by its slogan, ‘three polls,one vote’, urging voters to use national political criteria and vote for the party’s

candidates across all three elections, regardless of the particularities of differentcontests. The party gave a clear anti-governmental and anti-austerity character to its

discourse and another of its central slogans was ‘on the 25th we vote, on the 26th theyleave’, suggesting there could be a government change the day after the concurrentsecond round of the local elections and European elections. In 2010 it was the then

official opposition, ND, which had given local elections a status of ‘nationalreferendum’. Campaigns with national characteristics also took place in the local

elections of 2006 (Mavris 2006, p. 131), of 2002 (Mavris 2002, p. 44) and before.PASOK, through the statements of its leader, Evangelos Venizelos, made clear that

its main electoral goal was to win third place in the European elections, downplayingthe importance of the local ones. KKE, running lists in every region and almost every

municipality, pursued the isolationist strategy it followed at the national level, refusingto form any kind of alliance anywhere. GD followed an opposite strategy, common to

radical right-wing parties (Georgiadou 2013, p. 89): acknowledging that it did not

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have the organisational strength to support many candidates, it followed the logic of afew ‘strongholds’ at the municipal level, contesting only nine of the 100 most

significant municipalities. It also ran candidates in 12 of the 13 regions (the exceptionwas the Northern Aegean). GD’s discourse was clearly anti-political and anti-party and

also dominated by racist, anti-immigrant and anti-EU rhetoric. ANEL supportedcandidates, whether from its own ranks or from another party, in only six of the 13

regions and in a handful of municipalities, focusing more on the European elections.DIMAR’s declared aim was to combat the polarisation of the political scene between

ND and SYRIZA and to ‘provide solutions at the local level’. The party renewed itssupport for the successful independent candidates whom it had supported jointly withPASOK in 2010, adding a few others as well and supporting a candidate in 12 regions.

Except in the Peloponnese region, the governing partners, ND and PASOK, did notchoose to promote joint candidacies in any other region or major municipality in the

first round. Instead, they formed separate lists and ran against each other. This was a keyfactor in preventing the local elections from acquiring the character of a government–

opposition battle or of the aforementioned triangular shape. The two governing partiessupported each other’s candidacies only in the second round and especially in cases

where the opposing candidate came fromSYRIZA, notably in themunicipality of Athensand the Attica region. In sum, at the regional level, there were two joint candidacies fromSYRIZA and the Ecologists-Greens (Oikolόgoi Prάsinoi), four from PASOK/DIMAR

and one from DIMAR and Action (Drάsh [Drasi]), a small liberal pro-memorandumparty. In themunicipal elections, there were ten joint PASOK/DIMAR candidacies, three

SYRIZA/DIMAR candidacies, one ND/DIMAR and one DIMAR/Greens. DIMAR’sparticipation in almost every joint candidacy is indicative of the party’s approach to the

2014 local elections, where it strove to form asmany alliances as possible at the local level.

Results

Turnout

In the 2010 local elections, turnout hit historical lows, with 60.9 per cent in the first

round of the regional elections. Some possible explanations offered in that case includethe significant differences between urban and rural areas, with greater turnout in thelatter; an age gap, with younger voters participating less; and declining interest in

politics, as suggested by some survey data (Kafe, Nezi & Pieridis 2011). To thesevariables, an analysis of the continuous decline in turnout in Greece between 2000 and

2009 (Vassilopoulos & Vernardakis 2011) adds the decline of party politics; theweakening of party identification; and a combination of generation replacement and a

‘cohort effect’, with the entry to the electorate of less politicised voters who grew upafter the late 1990s, when political cynicism and erosion of trust started to characterise

the political system. To these factors one should add a classic assumption from therational choice tradition (Downs 1957), namely that people do not turn out to vote

unless they can differentiate between the available options before them. In this respect,

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there was evidence of a growing process of homogenisation of the political discourse ofthe two major parties, PASOK and ND, throughout the 2000s (Tsirbas 2009, p. 86;

Konstantinidis & Tsirbas 2014). Another possible contributor to the gradual decreasein turnout is the alienation from the political system which was intensified by the

economic crisis. Since the beginning of the latter and particularly the internationalbailouts, decisions have increasingly been taken outside the political sphere or at least

outside a political sphere within the reach of a national voter and this is likely to have anegative effect on turnout, since ‘voters will take more time and resources for

something that matters more’ (Blais 2000, p. 139).In 2014, turnout in the local elections remained steady and even demonstrated a slight

increase: in the first round, turnoutwas 61.6 per cent in the regional elections as opposed

to 60.9 per cent in 2010 and 61.6 per cent compared with 61 per cent at the municipallevel.4 However, the increase in regional first-round turnout between 2010 and 2014 was

mainly due to the increase in Attica. In the second round of the regional elections, theincrease in turnout was far more impressive: 59.9 per cent compared with 46.7 per cent.

This can be attributed to two factors: firstly, to the increased turnout in Attica, the firstregional election to record an increase between the first and second rounds

(62.4 per cent from 61.1 per cent), underlining the importance of this particular contest.The main explanation, however, was probably the fact that the second round coincidedwith the European elections, resulting in a significant restraint of the traditional drop in

turnout between the first and second rounds. Characteristically, in the 2010 regionalelections the average drop in turnout between the first and second round was 13.1 per

cent, while in 2014 it was just four per cent. In the meantime, however, more than1.2 million voters had left the electorate between 2002 and 2010 (Figure 1). In this case,

absolute numbers of voters are more appropriate for depicting the evolution of turnoutacross time, because of various problems of accuracy with the electoral registers.

It is clear from Figure 1 that second-tier local elections have systematically beenmore mobilising than European ones and that after a decade with a continuous drop

in the number of voters, resulting in a loss of almost one-fifth of the electorate, turnoutdemonstrated a tendency to stabilise at around six million voters in 2012–14. Possibly,generation replacement is concluded for this decade, as is the toll of voters taken by the

eroding effects of the multilevel crisis. It is also interesting that the Greek localelections conform to the hypothesis of the SOE model with regard to the increase of

blank and invalid ballots. In the first round of the regional elections, blank/invalidballots were 7.1 per cent of the total votes cast, rising to 15.4 per cent in the second

round. The figures for the 2014 municipal elections are similar, as also are both tiers in2010. In contrast, in the May and June 2012 parliamentary elections, the percentage of

blank/invalid ballots was only 2.4 per cent and one per cent, respectively.

Massive Political Personnel Renewal: A ‘Contagion’ Effect at the Local Level?

The 2012 parliamentary elections brought an unprecedented renewal of the Greek

political personnel: 50 per cent of MPs (149 out of 300)5 were elected for the first time

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either in May or in June 2012. Many well-known former MPs, even cabinet ministers,left parliament after serving several consecutive terms. Combined with growing

alienation and the widespread de-legitimisation of the political system, all this suggestsa hypothesis of a contagion effect at the local level, even taking into account the

particularities of the local elections, where candidates’ personalities, local campaigningand incumbent performance can influence the outcome. Indeed, as shown in Table 2,the 2014 elections saw a renewal of local government personnel that reached an

unprecedented6 71 per cent in the 100 most significant municipalities. Moreover, only40 per cent of incumbent mayors were re-elected, the lowest rate since 1998. In 2010,

this figure was 59 per cent and in 2006 it was 56 per cent (Table 3). In regional

Table 2 Renewal of Political Personnel in the 2014 Local Government Elections (100 mostsignificant municipalities and 13 regions)

Mayors Regional secretaries

Renewal rate (%) Re-election rate (%) Renewal rate (%) Re-election rate (%)

2010–14 71 40 54 502006–10 53 592002–06 55 561998–2002 63 45

Source: Ministry of the Interior election site, www.ekloges.ypes.gr, calculation by the author.

8,000,000

7,500,000

7,000,000

6,500,000

6,000,000

5,500,000

5,000,000

1998

1999

2000

2002

2004

2006

2007

2009

2010

2012

a

2012

b

2014

European ElectionsLocal Government

National Elections

Figure 1 Number of Voters in Parliamentary, Second-Tier Local Government andEuropean Elections, 1998–2014. Source: Ministry of the Interior.Note: Data for local government concern the first round of elections for prefectures (1998,2002, 2006) and regions (2010, 2014). Calculation for local elections 1998–2006 and figureby the author.

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elections, in seven out of 13 regions a new regional governor was elected. Of the 12incumbent regional governors who contested the elections, half were re-elected.

Needless to say, since this was only the second time that regional elections had beenheld, caution is required in drawing any definite conclusions. There are, however,

serious indications that the contagion hypothesis is valid and that Greek voters dealtwith their local lords in 2014 by tending to get rid of old faces, similarly to the way they

dealt with their national representatives in 2012.

Regional Election Outcomes

In the regional elections, as second-round turnout was almost the same as in the first

round, with voters of eliminated candidates also turning out to vote (presumablybecause of the simultaneous European elections), it is clear that all kinds ofmovements took place between first- and second-round preferences. As depicted in

Table 3, in six of the 13 regions, candidates from the ranks of ND were elected with thesupport of the party, even if some were labelled ‘independent’ (as occurred in East

Macedonia & Thrace, Northern Aegean, Epirus, Thessaly, South Aegean and CentralGreece). In the Peloponnese, the joint ND–PASOK candidate was also elected, raising

the number of regions controlled by ND to seven, a figure that can be seen as a success,since the party won two more regions than in 2010. SYRIZA-supported candidates

were elected in only two regions, although one of these, Attica, is the largest in thecountry, containing almost one-third of the electorate. For SYRIZA, the Attica victory

somewhat counterbalanced the impact of ND’s domination in most regions, especially

Table 3 Party Affiliation and First-Round Vote Share of Regional Election Winners,2010–14

2014 2010

Region Winning party 1st round (%) Winning party 1st round (%)

East Macedonia & Thrace ND 34.7 PASOK 41.8Attica SYRIZA 23.8 PASOK 24.1North Aegean ND 31.5 PASOK 36.3Western Greece PASOK 23.1 PASOK 43.3Western Macedonia Independent 29.1 ND 46.3Epirus ND 50.8 ND–LAOS* 44.8Thessaly ND 42.9 ND 38.6Ionian Islands SYRIZA 20.6 ND–LAOS 30.4Central Macedonia Independent 32.8 ND 43.2Crete PASOK 41.1 PASOK 50.3South Aegean ND 35.7 PASOK 50.9Peloponnese ND–PASOK 43.2 PASOK–LAOS 41.7Central Greece ND 41.4 PASOK 39.0

Source: www.ekloges.ypes.grNote: *LAOS ¼ Laϊkό6 Oruόdojo6 Synagermό6 (Popular Orthodox Rally).

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since Attica is usually a harbinger of which party will dominate at the national level(Nikolakopoulos 2010). Of the remaining four regions, Crete andWestern Greece both

went to independent incumbents elected with PASOK in 2010, while WesternMacedonia was won by an independent candidate supported by ANEL. In the

remaining Central Macedonia region, a rebel ND candidate (the incumbent regionalgovernor), who had adopted anti-governmental rhetoric, defeated the candidate who

was officially endorsed by the party. Overall, all three main parties had reason to besatisfied with the regional election results: ND because it increased the number of

regions it controlled, PASOK because it retained its dominance in two regions, withvote shares that were double or triple its national influence, and SYRIZA because forthe first time it controlled two regions, including the most important of all.

In terms of total electoral influence (shown in Table 4), although the politicalsituation is not completely suitable for aggregating regional vote shares, a calculation

based on adding the regional election results and adjusting them to reflect the differentsize of the regions produces an estimate of national electoral influence of 25.6 per cent

for ND, 17.7 per cent for SYRIZA and 14.7 per cent for PASOK. GD got 8.1 per cent,with a striking 11.1 per cent in the Attica region, which was, however, the only region

where it got a two-digit vote share. Nevertheless, it was clear that GD solidified its 2012influence at the regional level. ANEL and DIMAR secured 4.8 per cent and 3.7 per cent,respectively, if their regional results are projected to the national level. Whether,

however, these results are corrective to the previous parliamentary elections or signalwhat will happen in the next ones, as Nikolakopoulos categorises the function of local

government elections (2002, p. 36), remains to be seen.

Municipal Election Outcomes

In the municipal elections candidates that were in some way officially affiliated with

ND won 32 municipalities out of a total of 325, while the respective number for

Table 4 Nationwide Party Strength, 2012–14

May 2014 regional elections* (%) June 2012 parliamentary elections (%)

ND 25.6 29.7SYRIZA 17.7 26.9PASOK 14.7 12.3ANEL 4.8 7.5GD 8.1 6.9DIMAR 3.7 6.3KKE 8.8 4.5Other 16.6 5.9

Source: www.ekloges.ypes.grNote: *Calculation for regional elections by the author. Percentages were weighted according toregional electorates’ sizes, and in cases of joint candidacies vote shares were allocated according to therespective parties’ vote shares in June 2012.

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SYRIZA was eight. The official KKE candidate won the election in Patras, the third-biggest municipality in Greece, in terms of population, and at least two other

municipalities. Some of the candidates that DIMAR supported either with otherpolitical forces (i.e. Athens, Thessaloniki) or alone (smaller municipalities) were

elected, as well as one with the support of the Greens and one with the support ofDrasi. In the remaining almost 270 municipalities, officially independent candidates

were elected, according to the Ministry of the Interior, albeit detailed research at thelocal level would reveal more party affiliations than those officially registered,

especially in small municipalities. Two of the most important municipal electionoutcomes were the reinforcement of independent candidates and the appearance of a‘soccer effect’ with cases in which candidates associated with local football teams won

significant municipalities.

Athens and Thessaloniki: The ‘Kaminis–Boutaris’ Phenomenon

In Greek local government elections, public attention has traditionally been focused

on three municipalities: Athens, Thessaloniki and Piraeus. Their results set a great dealof the tone as to which party has won or lost the local elections overall, especially since

1986, when the then official opposition, ND, ran three high-calibre MPs as candidatesand won all three cities. This was also the first election to overturn a tradition dating

back to the 1950s of a second-round alliance of the left and centre against thecandidates of the right (Nikolakopoulos 2002, p. 37). Thereafter, major parties have

always fielded well-known cadres as candidates in these cities. In Athens andThessaloniki, ND maintained its dominance for six consecutive terms, until 2010,while Piraeus has since 1982 swung between PASOK and ND, with the former electing

five mayors and the latter four including in 2010.However, in 2010 two independent candidates, from outside traditional party

politics, were elected in Athens and Thessaloniki. Giorgos Kaminis, a universityprofessor of law and the former Greek Ombudsman, won Athens with the support of

PASOK, DIMAR and the Greens. In Thessaloniki, Yannis Boutaris, a well-knownbusinessman and eco-activist, was elected with the support of PASOK and DIMAR.

In both cases, these elections had ended a 24-year-long dominance of ND mayors inthe two biggest municipalities. In public discourse, Kaminis and Boutaris are usuallyregarded as facets of the same phenomenon: two successful people from outside

politics, bringing a new approach to the handling of public affairs, having a progressivestance towards issues that can be placed on the social liberalism versus social

conservatism dimension – like gay and minority rights and the cremation of the dead(which is still not practised in Greece) – while at the same time pursuing policies that

facilitate free enterprise in their cities.Despite their differences in approaching certain issues, Kaminis and Boutaris are seen

by many opinion leaders, especially on the centre-left part of the political spectrum, as amodel for conducting politics in the future, the main characteristics of which are

perceived to be prudency and effectiveness. This impression is further enhanced by the

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fact that the two mayors often make joint public appearances and statements. Duringthe campaign, they participated in the ‘Initiative of the Five’, along with the mayors of

Patras, Volos and Ioannina, also elected in 2010 with the support of PASOK andDIMAR. The initiative aimed ‘to get rid of party dependencies, offer innovative

solutions for the improvement of the quality of life, rational management of resourcesand jurisdictions and redefining of the relations between municipalities and the state

and municipalities and businessmen’.7 The mayors therefore adopted an anti-partyrhetoric while accepting the official support of political parties. Of the Five, only

Kaminis and Boutaris were re-elected in 2014. Their re-election in the two mostimportant municipalities of Greece was interpreted as indicating that a new model ofpolitician is gaining ground: officials detached from party politics who focus on

pragmatism, common sense and post-materialist issues rather than classic left–rightissues.

Athens and Thessaloniki (along with the Attica region) were the main arenas oflosses for ND, which received a clear message of disapproval here. As shown in Table 5,

in Athens, Kaminis won a low 21 per cent in the first round, while SYRIZA’s candidate,the unknown 34-year-old Gabriel Sakellaridis, came second with a surprising 20 per

cent and ND’s candidate was placed third with 17 per cent. After dominating Athensfor several decades, ND did not even manage to get its candidate into the secondround. GD’s performance was once again impressive (16 per cent): more than three

times its vote share in the 2010 municipal elections and twice its share in June 2012.In the second round, Kaminis beat Sakellaridis by less than three per cent (51.4 per

cent versus 48.6 per cent). In Thessaloniki, Boutaris had a much easier victory, leadingND’s candidate by ten per cent in the first round (36 per cent to 26 per cent) and 16 per

cent in the second (58 per cent to 42 per cent) while SYRIZA finished third with 11 percent. GD’s candidate won almost eight per cent, an increase over the six per cent of

June 2012. As already mentioned, GD chose to support candidates officially in onlynine of the 100 most significant municipalities. Its vote share exceeded that of June

2012 only in three municipalities: Athens, Thessaloniki and the Athenian middle-classsuburb of Kifissia. In the remaining six municipalities that it contested, GD’s vote wason average 30 per cent less than its 2012 parliamentary vote share in the same

municipalities.

Piraeus and Volos: The Soccer Effect or a Greek-Style Berlusconism

Piraeus, on the other hand, was linked to a new phenomenon that made its first

appearance in the 2014 local elections and can be associated with the malaise anddeepening legitimacy crisis of traditional politics. Piraeus is the fifth biggest

municipality in terms of population and the fourth in terms of registered voters.Politically, however, it is the third-most important city, owing to its central position –

adjacent to Athens and literally inseparable from it – and its economic importance asthe country’s largest port. It is also home of the very popular Olympiakos Football Club

(FC). No mayor or MP could be elected easily (or at all) in Piraeus if they were not on

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good terms with the club, its management and its fans. In fact, in 2006 a former

Olympiakos basketball player was elected mayor with the support of PASOK. However,the club had never before sought openly to gain direct access to public affairs.

In early April 2014, only a few weeks before the 18 May first round, press reportsbegan to refer to Vangelis Marinakis, a powerful ship-owner and the major stockholder

and leader of Olympiakos FC, as a potential candidate mayor of Piraeus. BesidesOlympiakos fans, the local Orthodox bishop, other ship-owners and local businessmen

also publicly supported a potential Marinakis ticket.8 Finally, Marinakis chose to runone of his employees, Yannis Moralis, a member of Olympiakos’ management, asmayoral candidate while reserving for himself a mere candidacy for the local council,

Table 5 Municipal Elections Results in Athens, Thessaloniki, Piraeus and Volos, 2010–14

2014 2010

City/Party support 1st round (%) 2nd round (%) 1st round (%) 2nd round (%)

AthensPASOK/DIMAR (Kaminis) 21.1 51.4 28.3 52.0SYRIZA 20.0 48.6 5.8 –ND* 16.9 – 35.0 48.0GD 16.1 – 5.3 –KKE 7.4 – 13.7 –Others 18.5 – 11.9 –

ThessalonikiPASOK/DIMAR (Boutaris) 36.0 58.1 33.6 50.2ND 26.2 41.9 37.9 49.8SYRIZA 10.6 – 3.7 –GD 7.7 – 1.0 –KKE 6.2 – 9.5 –Others 13.3 – 14.3 –

PiraeusIndependent (Moralis) 33.3 55.2 – –ND 31.3 44.8 23.1 51.8SYRIZA† 17.1 – 7.6 –KKE 6.7 – 14.8 –GD 5.7 – – –PASOK – – 29.6 48.2Others 5.9 – 24.9 –

VolosIndependent (Beos) 38.3 53.1 – –SYRIZA‡ 24.8 46.9 11.0 –PASOK/DIMAR§ 15.3 – 37.9 52.3ND 13.3 – 35.9 47.8KKE 8.4 – 15.2 –

Source: www.ekloges.ypes.grNotes: *With LAOS in 2010.†With DIMAR and the Greens in 2010/with the Greens in 2014.‡With the Greens in 2014.§With the Greens in 2010.

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nevertheless leaving no doubt as to who was going to be the strongman of the ticket.The discourse of Moralis and Marinakis in their pre-election interviews was largely

anti-party and apolitical, based on claims they wanted to introduce something new thatwould transcend the traditional left–right divide.9 Marinakis was accused both by his

main political opponents and in several news reports of having close relations withGD10 and was also linked to corruption issues. In 2011 and 2014, he was charged with

complicity in acts of bribery and manipulating football matches but he denied anywrongdoing and the relevant trials were still pending in 2014.11

Similarly, in Volos, Greece’s eighth-biggest municipality, the election was contested byAchilleas Beos, the strongman of a popular Volos soccer team,who had already served oneyear in prison for the same match-fixing case mentioned in relation to Marinakis. Beos’s

discourse had anti-system traits. His adventures with the law did not prevent him fromadvocating ‘fresh people who are not corrupt’ and condemning the whole ‘metapolitefsi’

(metapolίteysh), i.e. the period since the restoration of Greek democracy in 1974,during which he alleged that politicians ‘stole the money of the people’. He was also

openly against ‘people of arts and education’.12 It is obvious that Moralis’s and Beos’sdiscourse shared anti-party and anti-political characteristics with that of GD.

Moralis, the son of a PASOK minister of the 1980s, running against an incumbentND candidate and an official SYRIZA candidate, finished first with 33 per cent in thefirst round, beating the incumbent mayor with 55 per cent in the second round.

SYRIZA’s candidate got 17 per cent while KKE’s got almost seven per cent (Table 5).While the accusations about Moralis’s and Marinakis’s relationship with GD were not

proven, in the first round of the elections GD’s candidate won only 5.7 per cent of thevotes, compared with a GD score in Piraeus of 11.9 per cent in the simultaneous

regional elections and 10.7 per cent in the European elections one week later. Thismade GD the third-strongest force in the city (after Moralis and ND). In Volos, Beos

was also elected mayor with 38 per cent (well ahead of SYRIZA’s 25 per cent) in thefirst round and 53 per cent to SYRIZA’s 47 per cent in the second. The incumbent

mayor, supported by DIMAR, finished third with 15 per cent.The cases of Piraeus and Volos demonstrate a new trend in Greek politics, which

may have been implicit for some time but became more salient than ever in 2014: the

‘soccer effect’ or a Greek-style ‘Berlusconism’. As a political and socio-culturalphenomenon, Berlusconism, named after the Italian media mogul, football club

owner and prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, involves intense personalisation ofpolitics, the rise of billionaires in the political sphere and the extensive use of the myth

of the ‘self-made man’ whose main goal is supposedly ‘getting things done’ (Cagossi2010, p. 28). Berlusconism is also deemed to be ‘anti-politics’, in that the leader does

not try to lead the people but rather ‘rides the crest’ of negative public sentiments(Pasquino 2007, p. 50). The similarities with the Piraeus and Volos cases are striking.There is, however, an important difference: in Italy, ‘videocracy’ is another critical

aspect of the phenomenon, meaning the almost total control of mass media messagesby a single political person (Cagossi 2010, p. 33). In the Greek case, although intense

media concentration and lack of diversity are not absent, videocracy is at the local level

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replaced by ‘soccerocracy’, wherein attention and popularity capital accumulated byactivities in the arena of mass professional sports are invested in the realm of politics.

Berlusconism is thought to be erosive of democracy, because it resembles a ‘sultanate’(Sartori 2009) and undermines many of the premises of a democratic regime, like the

separation of powers (Cagossi 2010, p. 30). However, if in Italy Berlusconism isaccused of being one of several causes of the erosion of trust in the political system, in

Greece one could argue for the opposite: it is the generalised erosion of trust inpolitical institutions that seems to have facilitated this kind of phenomenon.

Three Polls, But How Many Votes?

The 2014 elections were the first occasion when Greek voters had to cast votes in threedifferent polls at the same time. If both rounds of local elections are taken intoaccount, a large proportion of the Greek electorate cast a ballot in five polls (two

rounds of municipal and regional, as well as one round of European elections). Thequestion that arises is how the voters behaved when confronted with so many choices.

Was the dominant trend a party-coherent behaviour that did not differentiate betweenelections? Or was there an approach that differed between elections but was consistent

within election type and possibly conformed to the theoretical assumptions ofelections of different order? Or was voting differentiated in terms of both parties and

election type, suggesting a totally fragmented image of voting behaviour in 2014?To tackle the above questions, the 100 most significant municipalities were analysed.

For representational reasons, all 50 prefecture capitals were included, while thecriterion for the remainder was population size. In each municipality, vote share in theEuropean elections and in the first round of the municipal and regional elections was

taken into account.13 This allows us to see the relative strength between different pollsfor each party, while by correlating vote shares between different polls we can

determine the degree of volatility and national vote coherence for each party.Figure 2 presents the vote share for each election for the seven parliamentary parties.

ND’s electoral strength in the 100 most significant municipalities was greatest in themunicipal elections (27 per cent) and lowest in the European elections (21.7 per cent).

SYRIZA’s vote structure was the reverse of ND’s, with its weakest performance at themunicipal level (15.2 per cent) and its strongest in the European elections (27.7 percent). PASOK’s vote pattern is somewhat different: strongest at the regional level (18.3

per cent) with its municipal vote share close behind (17.7 per cent). At both levels oflocal government, PASOK demonstrated a greater influence than SYRIZA, emerging as

second party after ND. In comparison, in the European elections PASOK’s influence inthe same municipalities fell to 7.5 per cent. The regional elections were also the

strongest arena for both ANEL and DIMAR (11.4 per cent and 7.2 per cent,respectively). At the municipal level, ANEL got 1.3 per cent, contesting only nine

municipalities and DIMAR 3.9 per cent, contesting 19. GD’s vote pattern resemblesthat of SYRIZA, becoming stronger as we move from local to national-level polls (1.7

per cent municipal, 8.2 per cent regional and 9.3 per cent European vote). However, in

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the nine municipalities where GD openly supported a candidate, the party

demonstrated an electoral strength close to its nationwide influence. Finally, the partywith the smallest deviation in electoral performance between the three different polls is

KKE, with 8.2 per cent in the municipal, 9.3 per cent in the regional and 6.4 per cent inthe European elections. KKE’s performance in the 2014 municipal elections was onaverage 1.69 times greater than in the June 2012 parliamentary elections, signalling a

significant regaining of influence for the Greek communists.In general, ND’s and, especially, PASOK’s performance in the municipal and

regional elections indicated that in the local elections of 2014 long-established localnetworks continued to play a significant part, as did the personality of specific

candidates and their visibility at the local level, accumulated over the years. SYRIZA, incontrast, having been a major party only for a couple of years, did not have the time to

capitalise on its national influence in local networks and to recruit the appropriatepolitical personnel to successfully contest a large number of local elections.In SYRIZA’s case, there was a ratio of almost 1:2 between its municipal and European

election influence, suggesting a complete reversal of the pattern of the past, when theleft in Greece had almost double the influence in municipal elections that it had at the

national level (Nikolakopoulos 2002, p. 37).The variations between the different polls indicate considerable electoral volatility.

Indeed, if we apply the Pedersen (1979) formula for the differences between thedifferent kinds of elections, we get a volatility index of 25.2 between the municipal and

regional elections. This means that a quarter of the Greek electorate split their votes

New Democracy SYRIZA PASOK

Golden Dawn KKEDemocratic Left

Indep. Greeks

Figure 2 Vote Share of Major Greek Parties, According to Election Type, in the 100 MostSignificant Municipalities, May 2014

South European Society and Politics 17

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between the two levels of local government elections, voting on the same day for oneparty’s candidate in the municipal and another party’s candidate in the regional

elections. The levels of volatility are similar between regional and European (28.1) andmunicipal and European elections (22.4).

In order to determine the level of vote coherence for each party, bivariatecorrelations were run for the three different pairs of election types: municipal–

regional, municipal–European and regional–European. In the comparisonbetween election results in different geographical units, correlation coefficients do

not measure the similarity or proximity of vote shares between different election types,but to what extent they change in a similar or different linear pattern (Zafiropoulos &Hatzipantelis 2001, p. 91). Table 6 presents the respective correlation coefficients for

each party.For ND every correlation is positive, meaning that when its vote share in a

municipal poll rises, so do its vote shares in the regional and European polls. Equally,when its vote share is lower in a municipal poll, the same is expected for its score the

other two polls within the same municipality. The strongest correlation is betweenmunicipal and European elections (r ¼ 0.574). In general, the fact that all three

election type pairs are positively correlated confirms the national character of ND’selectoral influence. The case of SYRIZA is similar. However, its weak penetration at thelocal level is confirmed. The strongest correlation concerning SYRIZA’s percentages is

between regional and European elections (r ¼ 0.720), indicative of a party in theprocess of building a national electorate. The third party whose influence has a

national character beyond any doubt is KKE. All of its correlations are positive andstrong, the strongest one being between regional and European elections (r ¼ 0.858).

PASOK’s political survival has been one of the main questions in Greek electoralpolitics since the 2012 elections. The party’s rather good performance in the 2014 local

elections might be considered a signifier of its electoral recovery. The local networksthat secured the high percentages of its candidates might be regarded as safeguards of

the party’s national influence. However, the non-significant correlation between itsmunicipal and regional vote shares as well as the two other weak correlations indicatethat PASOK’s electoral influence is, rather, undergoing a phase of fragmentation,

suggesting that those hopeful local results were mostly about the persons and notabout the party.

GD seems to going in the opposite direction. The correlations between its municipaland regional and between its municipal and European vote shares were not statistically

significant in 2014. However, this may be due to the limited number of cases.Nevertheless, its regional–European elections correlation (r ¼ 0.654) is the third-

strongest after KKE and SYRIZA, confirming the existence of a national character toGD’s electoral influence. The electoral influence of the other parties seems to lack anational character. This is especially the case for DIMAR, whose only significant

correlation is between its regional and European vote share, albeit with the weak figureof 0.248. ANEL demonstrates the same impression, although its correlation between

the regional and European polls is somewhat stronger (r ¼ 0.506).

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Table

6CorrelationCoefficientsbetweenDifferentElectionTypes

inMay

2014,byParty

Party

vote

Correlationsbetweenelectiontypes

ND

SYRIZA

PASO

KANEL

GD

DIM

AR

KKE

Municipal–regional

r¼

0.498**

r¼

0.303**

r¼

0.090

r¼

0.995

r¼

20.386

r¼

20.402

r¼

0.824**

n¼

79n¼

88n¼

64n¼

3n¼

8n¼

17n¼

77Municipal–European

r¼

0.611**

r¼

0.410**

r¼

0.376**

r¼

20.833*

r¼

20.350

r¼

20.004

r¼

0.811**

n¼

79n¼

88n¼

65n¼

8n¼

9n¼

18n¼

77Regional–European

r¼

0.549**

r¼

0.720**

r¼

0.241*

r¼

0.084

r¼

0.654**

r¼

0.105

r¼

0.858**

n¼

100

n¼

100

n¼

95n¼

53n¼

97n¼

98n¼

100

Note:Calculationofcoefficientsbytheauthor.

Pearsonproduct

momentcorrelation:*correlationsignificantat

the0.05

level;**correlationsignificantat

the0.01

level.

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Conclusions

To sum up, the 2014 local elections in Greece largely conformed to SOE assumptions,especially at the municipal level. They were characterised by increased volatility,increased blank/invalid votes and the regaining or confirmation of influence for some

smaller parties like KKE and GD alongside somewhat alarming defeats for the maingoverning party, ND, in the biggest city and biggest region. However, the rest of the

election results indicated a rather good performance by ND, a little shy of the party’sJune 2012percentages.Hence, the 2014 local elections did not by themselves constitute a

challenge to government stability. In general, government–opposition polarisationwaspresent but not dominant. SYRIZA, which tried to ignite the aforementioned

polarisation, had the image of a party in the process of acquiring an electoral influencewith national characteristics. However, SYRIZA did not succeed in giving the local

elections a truly national character and failed to translate its national-level influence tothe local level, except in its victory in Attica and its good performance in Athens and afew other municipalities. PASOK demonstrated resilience at the local level. It is,

nevertheless, questionable whether this means something positive for the party at thenational level or that the decline in its national influence is reversible. Regarding the

other parties, GD’s performance confirmed once again that this neo-Nazi formation ishere to stay, having an electoral influence with a national profile, while DIMAR and, to a

lesser extent, ANEL seem to be in crisis. KKE’s results could signal the return of the partyto the levels of influence it had prior to the June 2012 parliamentary elections. Finally, it

should be noted that The River (ToPotάmi [To Potami]), a party recently formed by awell-known journalist, chose not to contest the local elections at all, but gained 6.6 percent in the European elections, emerging as a potential future player at the national level.

The 2014 elections marked a massive renewal of local political personnel,demonstrated a halt in turnout decrease and confirmed the importance of new forms

of politics. At the same time, phenomena linked to political malaise, like severe anti-partisanship, occurred and seem likely to be transferred to the central political scene.

In general, the fact that vote structure, relative electoral strength and inter-electioncorrelations were so divergent across parties and different types of elections indicates that

the Greek political system has entered a second phase of transition, after the completedealignment of 2012. This is probably a phase of shape acquisition, which could lead

either to a system with clear local sub-systems or to one with more coherent nationalcharacteristics, somewhat reminiscent of the bipolarisation that characterised Greekpolitics for decades, but surely withweaker poles.Whether the process of electoral retreat

of some parties and advance of others will continue or not, both locally and nationally, is,of course, of great importance for future developments. Finally, the most appropriate

phrase to summarise the 2014 elections in Greece seems to be ‘as many votes as polls’.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Panagiotis Koustenis for providing access to the database of regionalelections results within municipalities and Elthina Angelopoulou for helping with the organisation

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of this database. The author is also grateful to the journal’s two anonymous reviewers for theirinsightful comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/2-14082014-AP/EN/2-14082014-AP-EN.PDF (accessed 16 November 2014).

2. http://www.eurobank.gr/Uploads/Reports/7_HMERES_OIKONOMIA_61114.pdf, referred toby http://www.poleconomix.gr/portal/pages/7587 (both accessed 16 November 2014).

3. If the required majority of 180 out of 300ºMPs is not achieved for the election of the president ofthe Republic, then a general election is held, following which the new parliament can elect apresident with a simple majority of 151ºMPs.

4. http://ekloges.ypes.gr/5. Calculation by the author based on data from: http://www.parliament.gr/Vouleftes/Statistika-

Stoicheia/ (accessed 6 July 2014)6. Unprecedented for the five rounds of local government elections (1998, 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014)

for which there are available official data online.7. http://www.tovima.gr/politics/article/?aid¼5763278. http://www.thetoc.gr/eng/the-talk-of-the-toc/article/marinakis-for-piraeus-mayor (accessed 8

July 2014).9. http://www.ethnos.gr/article.asp?catid¼22767&subid¼2&pubid¼6399054410. ND’s candidate in Piraeus, Vassilis Mihaloliakos, stated that GD’s support for the Moralis ticket

was centrally orchestrated: http://www.tanea.gr/news/ekloges2014/article/5122428/mixaloliakos-ayta-poy-symbainoyn-ston-peiraia-den-eixan-symbei-pote/ (accessed 14 Novem-ber 2014)

11. http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/news/_/id/6699614/greek-league-chief-vangelis-marinakis-linked-corruption-scandal

12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v ¼ kliXxI1rz28 (accessed 8 July 2014).13. For the regional and European elections, a weighted mean of vote shares according to the size of

each municipality was calculated. For municipal elections, however, a different strategy had to beemployed, since ANEL and GD supported a candidate only in nine municipalities, while DIMARsupported a candidate only in 19. If we calculated a weighted average for these few municipalitiesand then used some kind of projection (i.e. by projecting these parties’ vote share in themunicipalities they did not contest according to the municipal 2014/national 2012 ratio), wewould end up overestimating small parties’ influence. Therefore, for municipal elections, thesum of votes nationwide was merely taken into account. For regions and municipalities withjoint candidacies (PASOK/DIMAR, SYRIZA/DIMAR, ND/DIMAR, etc.), votes and vote shareswere split according to the percentage the respective parties received in the June 2012parliamentary elections. For the European elections, the vote for the Olive Tree’s (‘Elia’) alliancewas counted as a vote for PASOK, which was the only significant party of the formation.Information about parties’ support for candidates in the municipal elections was retrieved fromthe Ministry of the Interior, as well as from various news sources, both local and national.

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Yannis Tsirbas is a lecturer in electoral behavior at the University of Athens. His

publications include 28 Hmέre6: Eklogέ6, Politikή Diawήmish kai Eidhseio-grawίa [28 Days: Elections, Political Advertising and Political News], Athens,

Papazisis, 2007, articles in journals such as South European Society and Politics andGreek Political Science Review and chapters in edited volumes such as ‘Los principales

narradores y la narrativa dominante de la crisis griega’ in I. Martin and I. Tirado (eds),Grecia: aspectos polıticos y juridico-economicos de la crisis, Madrid, Centro de Estudios

Politicos and Constitucionales (forthcoming).

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