Realignment under Stress: The July 2015 Referendum and the September Parliamentary Election in Greece

Abstract

The victory of the radical-left SYRIZA in the September 2015 election confounded expectations given the failure of the SYRIZA–ANEL government formed in January either to deliver on its central promise of reversing austerity policies or to capitalise on its major victory in the July referendum. The article examines both the election and the referendum that preceded it, offering an explanation for SYRIZA’s victory. It also attempts to trace the trajectory of the current party system in Greece and its ongoing realignment process in light of the 2015 electoral contests and the busy political timeline since the formation of the first SYRIZA–ANEL government.

Keywords:

• Greek elections
• Greek referendum
• SYRIZA
• austerity
• economic crisis
• party system realignment

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Elias Nicolacopoulos and Theodoros Livanios for allowing us to use the data file of the joint exit poll of the 20 September 2015 election conducted by polling firms Alco, GPO–Opinion IPSOS, Marc, Metron and MRB. We are also grateful to Iannis Konstantinidis and polling firm ProRata for sharing with us the data from the pre-electoral survey conducted on 5–6 and 8–9 September 2015.

Notes

1. The MoU was signed between the Greek government on the one hand and the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission (EC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the other.

2. For an overview of voting intention trends during that period see: http://metapolls.net/estimates/greece-2/greece/#.VzzKQ5F96hc

3. The exact wording of the referendum question was, ‘Should the draft agreement be accepted, which was submitted by the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund to the Eurogroup of 25/06/2015 and consists of two parts, which constitute their unified proposal? The first document is entitled “Reforms for the Completion of the Current Programme and Beyond”, and the second “Preliminary Debt Sustainability Analysis”.’

4. The lack of accuracy of the exit poll’s prediction of the referendum result raised many questions about the overall accuracy of exit polls in Greece. Acknowledging the potential problems with the particular exit poll conducted on the day of the referendum, we decided to employ exit poll data for the September election, which proved to be much more accurate and included a recall question on the referendum vote.

5. The most controversial aspects of the third agreement included further pension cuts in an attempt to render the Greek social security system viable, new tax hikes and the privatisation of €50 billion of state assets. See Table 2 for the parliamentary vote on the third bailout.

6. Including most famously the pledges in the so-called ‘Thessaloniki programme’, a manifesto presented in September 2014 by Alexis Tsipras at the annual Thessaloniki International Trade Fair. The pledges included immediate measures to tackle the humanitarian crisis in Greece, to reform and democratise the political system and to reverse austerity while maintaining a balanced budget. Opposition parties criticised the pledges as unrealistic but Tsipras argued before the January 2015 election that the program was ‘not negotiable’.

7. Intention to vote for ANEL was not included in Table 4 due to the small number of respondents who declared their intention to vote for the party.

8. For similar conclusions see Dinas and Konstantinidis (2015). Their analysis is based on the results of a pre-electoral survey conducted by the University of Macedonia. They provide some evidence through a survey experiment that voters inclined to vote for SYRIZA distinguished between effort and outcome.