2007 Greek parliamentary election

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All 300 seats in theHellenic Parliament 151 seats needed for a majority
First party Second party Third party   Leader Kostas Karamanlis George Papandreou Aleka Papariga Party ND PASOK KKE Last election 45.36%, 165 seats 40.55%, 117 seats 5.90%, 12 seats Seats won 152 102 22 Seat change 13 15 10 Popular vote 2,994,979 2,727,279 583,815 Percentage 41.84% 38.10% 8.15% Swing 3.52pp 2.45pp 2.25pp   Fourth party Fifth party   Leader Alekos Alavanos Georgios Karatzaferis Party Syriza LAOS Last election 3.26%, 6 seats 2.19%, 0 seats Seats won 14 10 Seat change 8 10 Popular vote 361,211 271,764 Percentage 5.04% 3.80% Swing 1.77pp 1.61pp
Results by constituency
Prime Minister before election Kostas Karamanlis ND Prime Minister after election Kostas Karamanlis ND

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Parliamentary elections were held inGreece on Sunday, 16 September 2007 to elect the300 members of theHellenic Parliament. The leading party for a second term wasNew Democracy under the leadership ofKostas Karamanlis with 42%, followed byGeorge Papandreou andPASOK with 38%.New Democracy managed to secure an absolute but narrow majority of 152 out of 300 seats in parliament. ThepopulistPopular Orthodox Rally entered the parliament for the first time with 10 seats, while the parties of the left, theCommunist Party of Greece (KKE) andSyriza, enjoyed a significant increase in their vote share.KKE received 8% of the votes (up from 6%) and won 22 seats (from 12), whileSyriza received 5% of the votes (up 2pp) and 14 seats.

The difference of nearly four percentage points between the first two parties resulted inGeorge Papandreou announcing that he would seekreaffirmation of his party leadership, withEvangelos Venizelos andKostas Skandalidis also declaring candidacy for the post.^[1]

• August 22, 2007: TheDemocratic Social Movement (DIKKI) (6th largest party in the previous elections) announced itselectoral alliance with theCoalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA).^[2]
• August 29, 2007: Opinion pollers MRB came under criticism fromPASOK. Mathematical inconsistencies were alleged, such as response tallies summing up to more than 100%. MRB denied the allegations. MRB's parent company, Spot-Thompson Greece, areNew Democracy's advertisers.^{[citation needed]}
• August 30, 2007: MRB came under more fire as it cancelled publication of its regular biannual "Trends" survey, citing extreme difficulty in obtaining accurate information in thefire-stricken areas. Critics said that this admission automatically rendered previous voting behavior MRB estimates from these areas unreliable;^{[citation needed]} yet, the election results in the prefectures which were devastated by the fires (Ilia,Euboea andArcadia), were marked by a loss in votes for both the main opposition party and the ruling party.
• September 1, 2007: TheAreios Pagos refused to certifyFofi Gennimata as a candidate for the PASOK nationwide list, citing non-eligibility because Mrs. Gennimata is elected thesuperprefect of Athens and Piraeus. This was criticised angrily by PASOK as an attempt to politicise the courts.^[3]
• September 2, 2007: TheAreios Pagos:
  • refused to include the title of DIKKI in theelectoral alliance of SYRIZA claiming that the internal procedures followed by DIKKI were flawed. This was criticised furiously by SYRIZA and DIKKI as inappropriate interference in party political activity on behalf of the courts.^[4]
  • refused to allow theNew Fascism (Greek:Νέος Φασισμός) party contest the election because of its provocative name.^[5]
  • refused to allow theNew Salvation Party – Christian Democracy to use theCross as its logo on the grounds that it is a religious symbol.^[5]
  • excluded seven other parties from the elections for failure to pay the required electoral deposit.^[5]
• September 6, 2007:NET state television, insimulcast with the major private TV stations, broadcast the debate among the leaders of ND, PASOK,Communist Party of Greece (KKE), SYRIZA,Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS), andDemocratic Revival, who were questioned by six reporters in six rounds of questions and follow-ups. Questions and responses were rotated and timed. The debate lasted approximately 2.5 hours and concluded with a two-minute speech by each leader. The debate format, agreed beforehand by the participating parties, met with criticism for being too rigid and formal, too protective of the politicians and not conducive to exhaustive scrutiny of their policies.^{[citation needed]}

There were concerns that the election could return ahung parliament, mainly due to the recently revised Greek electoral law. Although it preserved the 3% threshold necessary for a party to enter parliament, it decreased the number of seats automatically awarded to the leading party. Parliamentary majority was considered more difficult, especially after the early projection that five parties would cross this threshold for the first time after themetapolitefsi.

According to the electoral law, the first-past-the post party was automatically awarded a bonus of 40 parliamentary seats. The remaining 260 seats were divided among all parties that achieved a minimum 3% nationwide vote tally, strictly in proportion to their polling returns. Since a majority of 151 seats was required, the leading party should secure at least 111 seats (42.7% of 260) in order to be able to form a government. Karamanlis had stated that in the event that no party should manage to achieve a majority, he would seek a new election.^[6]Papandreou had vaguely indicated that he may have pursued an alliance with the left, however the SYRIZA and KKE parties had categorically dismissed any possibility of participating in a coalition with any of the major parties.

No opinion polls were allowed to be published after September 1. The polls publicized prior to the election had concluded that:

• The next Parliament would be a five-party Parliament.
• New Democracy would hold a smaller lead over PASOK at around 2%.
• The goal of a workable parliamentary majority hung in the brink, with some pollsters projecting 147–149 and some 151–153 seats for the leading party.

The law traditionally requires that voting begins at "sunrise" and ends at "sunset". In practice this is rounded up to the nearest top of the hour. Voting began at 7 am and concluded at 7 pm. 7 pm was also the time when media outlets publicized their exit polls and issued their predictions. According to SingularLogic, the information technology contractor of the Ministry of the Interior, initial returns would not reach statistical significance before 11 pm and firm estimates might not emerge until after midnight. Voting took place in 20,623 polling stations – mostly schools – throughout the country, each of which catered to 400–500 voters on average.

A collection of opinion polls taken before the elections is listed below. According to a law, which was voted by the Greek parliament, publication of opinion polls is forbidden in the fortnight prior to the election date. Therefore, the last day when opinion polls were published was September 1, 2007, and practically all opinion polling firms published their final public reports on August 31, 2007, in time for the evening news.

The Greek media outlets issued theirexit polls at 19:00 local time.^[7][8]

Party		Votes	%	Seats	+/–
	New Democracy	2,994,979	41.84	152	–13
	PASOK	2,727,279	38.10	102	–15
	Communist Party of Greece	583,750	8.15	22	+10
	Syriza	361,101	5.04	14	+8
	Popular Orthodox Rally	271,809	3.80	10	+10
	Ecologist Greens	75,502	1.05	0	New
	Democratic Revival	57,167	0.80	0	New
	Union of Centrists	20,840	0.29	0	0
	Communist Party of Greece (Marxist–Leninist)	17,555	0.25	0	0
	Radical Left Front	11,843	0.17	0	0
	United Anti-Capitalist Left	10,604	0.15	0	0
	Marxist–Leninist Communist Party of Greece	8,137	0.11	0	0
	Liberal Alliance	7,498	0.10	0	New
	Liberal Party	3,099	0.04	0	0
	Organization for the Reconstruction of the Communist Party of Greece	2,473	0.03	0	0
	Fighting Socialist Party of Greece	2,109	0.03	0	0
	Greek Ecologists	1,740	0.02	0	New
	Light – Truth – Justice	970	0.01	0	New
	Democratic Universal Hellas	10	0.00	0	New
	Regional Urban Development	5	0.00	0	New
	Independents	536	0.01	0	0
Total		7,159,006	100.00	300	0
Valid votes		7,159,006	97.33
Invalid/blank votes		196,020	2.67
Total votes		7,355,026	100.00
Registered voters/turnout		9,918,917	74.15
Source:Ministry of the Interior

At 01:00 on 17 September 2007 PASOK leaderGeorge Papandreou conceded defeat and Prime MinisterKostas Karamanlis thanked the electorate for granting him andhis party a renewed term in office. Papandreou also stated that he will seek his party'sdirect reaffirmation in his leadership, andEvangelos Venizelos, PASOK's informal #2, declared himself "present" in this process. Papandreou went on and retained his leadership.^[9]

• List of members of the Hellenic Parliament, 2007–2009

• Dinas, Elias (2008) 'Greek general election of 2007: you cannot lose if your opponent cannot win,'West European Politics 31: 600–607.
• Gemenis, Kostas (2008) 'The 2007 Parliamentary Election in Greece,'Mediterranean Politics 13: 95–101.
• Gemenis, Kostas (2009) 'A Green comeback in Greece? The Ecologist Greens in the 2007 parliamentary election^{[permanent dead link]},'Environmental Politics 18: 128–134.
• Karamichas, John (2007) 'The impact of the summer 2007 forest fires in Greece: recent environmental mobilizations, cyber-activism and electoral performance,'South European Society and Politics 12: 521–33.
• Patrikios, Stratos; Karyotis, Georgios (2008), "The Greek parliamentary election of 2007",Electoral Studies,27 (2):356–359,doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2007.12.004

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