2004 Greek parliamentary election

none Greece parliamentary 2000 Greek parliamentary election 2000 2007 Greek parliamentary election 2007 All 300 seats in the Hellenic Parliament 151 7 March 2004 Kostas Karamanlis 2007-10-18.jpg Kostas Karamanlis New Democracy (Greece) 42.73%, 125 seats 165 40 3,359,682 45.36% 2.63pp George Papandreou (junior).jpg George Papandreou PASOK 43.80%, 158 seats 117 41 3,003,275 40.55% 3.25pp Aleka Papariga 2009 (cropped).jpg Aleka Papariga Communist Party of Greece 5.52%, 11 seats 12 1 436,573 5.90% 0.38pp Nikos Konstantopoulos 2013 cropped.jpg Nikos Konstantopoulos Syriza 3.20%, 6 seats 6 241,539 3.26% 0.06pp 2004 Greek Legislative Election Map.svg Results by constituency 350px Prime Minister Prime Minister after election Costas Simitis PASOK Kostas Karamanlis New Democracy (Greece) Parliamentary elections were held in Greece on 7 March 2004.Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p830 978-3-8329-5609-7 The New Democracy Party of Kostas Karamanlis won the elections, ending eleven years of rule by PASOK. PASOK was led into the elections by George Papandreou, who succeeded retiring Prime Minister Costas Simitis as party leader in February. Background Greek politics were strongly dynastic. Kostas Karamanlis is the nephew of Konstantinos Karamanlis, who was six times (1955, 1956, 1958, 1961, 1974, 1977) Prime Minister and twice President of Greece (1980–1985, 1990–1995), and the founder of New Democracy after the restoration of democracy in 1974. George Papandreou is the son of Andreas Papandreou, three times (1981, 1985, 1993) Prime Minister and the founder of PASOK, and the grandson of Georgios Papandreou, a liberal centrist who entered national politics in the 1920s and was twice Prime Minister (1944, 1963). Athens daily Kathimerini quoted a voter during the campaign as saying: "We Greeks like to know where our leaders come from. We feel we know these families as well as we know our own."January 2015 Campaign In January New Democracy was leading PASOK in opinion polls by 7%. But Papandreou's election to the party leadership allowed PASOK to regain ground. During February Papandreou campaigned on "the need for change" in Greece, hoping to neutralise the strong sentiment for a change of government. By late February New Democracy's lead in the opinion polls had been cut to 3%. The Athens daily Kathemerini commented: "Now, two weeks before the elections, all opinion polls show PASOK 3 to 4.5 percentage points behind ND. This raises the question of whether PASOK can snatch victory away from ND. The fact is that much is unclear. For example, although PASOK has little support, its leader has a good image in public opinion polls." The electoral campaign concluded on in the traditional manner, with huge televised mass rallies in the centre of Athens by each of the major parties. On the evening of 4 March Karamanlis addressed an estimated 200,000 at the ND's concluding rally. PASOK claimed that twice that number attended their rally on 6 March, but these numbers cannot be independently verified. At the ND rally, Karamanlis said that PASOK had been in power too long and had grown lazy and corrupt. At the PASOK rally, Papandreou evoked the memory of his father but said that he would lead a government dedicated to reform and change, as well as action against corruption. Since publication of opinion polls is banned in the last two weeks of Greek election campaigns, it was not possible to predict the outcome of the election, except to say that ND appeared to have been leading when the last polls were published, and that most commentators expected the result in terms of votes to be close. Greek electoral law ensures, through a complex algorithm of parliamentary seat redistribution, that a party polling a plurality of the vote (that is, more than any other party but also more than 40%) is practically guaranteed a majority in Parliament. A "threshold" of 3% of the total popular vote is also required by law for a party to be eligible for representation in Parliament. This provision kept all but the four top-polling parties from securing parliamentary seats. Opinion polls Opinion polling for the 2004 Greek parliamentary election Results thumb|Results, showing the winning party in each municipal unit. New Democracy (Greece) ND (711) PASOK PASOK (311) Communist Party of Greece KKE (2) The result of the election was not as close as observers expected. It appears that ND regained its earlier lead over PASOK in the two weeks after the last opinion polls, and that the election of George Papandreou as PASOK leader was not sufficient to overcome the desire of the electorate for a change after a long period of PASOK rule. File:Greek legislative election 2004.svg New Democracy 3360424 165 +40 PASOK 3003988 117 –41 Communist Party of Greece 436818 12 +1 Syriza 241714 6 0 Popular Orthodox Rally 162492 0 New Democratic Social Movement 132933 0 0 Union of Centrists 19510 0 0 Radical Left Front 11285 0 0 Communist Party of Greece (Marxist–Leninist) 10864 0 0 Anti-Capitalist Coalition el Αντικαπιταλιστική Συμμαχία 8320 0 New Hellenic Front 6762 0 New Marxist–Leninist Communist Party of Greece 4765 0 New Fighting Socialist Party of Greece 3175 0 0 Liberal Party 2619 0 0 Organization for the Reconstruction of the KKE 2097 0 0 Christopistía el Χριστοπιστία 3 0 0 Independents 605 0 0 166816 0 9886807 Nohlen & Stöver References Category:Parliamentary elections in Greece Parliamentary Greece Parliamentary Parliamentary