Greek Election 2015 2: Electric Boogaloo

[ChangeAndChance]

So with the snap election only a week away and polls indicating Syriza and New Democracy are roughly neck and neck in popular support, who do you think'll win this time round? Is there any hope for the Syriza splitter Popular Unity in the next parliament?

[Philosophos]

So with the snap election only a week away and polls indicating Syriza and New Democracy are roughly neck and neck in popular support, who do you think'll win this time round? Is there any hope for the Syriza splitter Popular Unity in the next parliament?

Well the polls show that Popular Unity will be in the parliament, alongside 6 or 7 other parties like ND, SYRIZA, KKE, Golden Dawn, Central Union (I don't know how to translate it properly), To Potami.

On the other hand you can't really be sure about polls, since they are just serving different masters every time and they just keep on spreading bullshit all around.

Also to answer to who will win in the elections I don't really care, shit are still going to stay shit, while greek people won't even understand "why this shit keeps happening" and "why the politicians are so corrupted" and pretty much nothing will be gained for the working class.

[PhoenixAsh]

That entirely depends on the 20% undecided....12% whom say they won't vote.

What is clear however is that the Left exit strategy parties are in the absolute minority. Neither KKE nor PU seemed to have gained significantly. Even GD, which has a rather swinging opinion of whether or not to stay in the EU, has not managed to capitalise as much in the polls as was initially indicated.

From that the conclusion can be drawn that staying within the EU is of first and foremost importance to the electorate and the working class over austerity itself.

And this is an important realization to make.

The working class isn't duped, betrayed or misled by evil politicians. The working class is ideologically embedded in the super structure and invested to maintain it. Rather than being the dumb victims they are an active, intelligent actor...with whom the message of the (more) radical left doesn't resonate.

[Luís Henrique]

So with the snap election only a week away and polls indicating Syriza and New Democracy are roughly neck and neck in popular support, who do you think'll win this time round?

Regardless of who gets more votes, in all likeliness these elections will result in a hung parliament, with no one being able to build a majority coalition, and, consequently, we are going to see new elections probably in early November.


Is there any hope for the Syriza splitter Popular Unity in the next parliament?

They will quite likely get into the parliament, where they will be a minor party among others like PASOK, the KKE, Golden Dawn and To Potami. If indeed there are new elections this year, I think they will probably grow a bit. They won't win the elections anyway, and I hope they won't fall into the trap of Syriza-led coalition.

Luís Henrique

[PhoenixAsh]

They will probably get half the number of seats the KKE gets....

6 seats probably.

[Ele'ill]

am i actually seeing 'electric boogaloo' in the thread title or is that entirely imagined

[Comrade Jacob]

People's trust for SYRIZA has been very damaged, I'm sure some will give KKE their vote.

[PhoenixAsh]

Marginally. They rank at 5.9%. Their results in the legislative elections of January 2015 were 5.5% (That is currently a little under 30.000 votes more).

To put these numbers in perspective. In may 2015 the KKE had 8.5% of the votes. That was more than 220.000 more votes than they would currently get according to the polls.

[stirnerakos]

20 of September are going to be elections in Greece. The possibilities are that either SYRIZA or New Democracy will win, but both will have to cooperate with a party so they can govern.
My questions are:
What would you call SYRIZA as a party? Social-democratic? Neoliberal (As me)? And so...
How do you view Λ.ΑΕ (Popular Unity)? Stalinist for example and so...
If syriza wins but not with enough votes to form a goverment all by itself, what do you think should happen? And what will be the outcome of a most probable cooperation.
note: I used to be a member of syriza, but left for many reasons.

[ChangeAndChance]

am i actually seeing 'electric boogaloo' in the thread title or is that entirely imagined

Yeah, it's real. When the inevitable 3rd Greek election this year comes around, I'll call the next thread "Greek Election 2015 3: Herp-A-Derp-A-Dee." :laugh:

[PhoenixAsh]

Voting started an hour ago.

To gain a majority in parliament a party needs 38% of the votes....since normally the largest party gets 50 seats extra. There are 300 seats.

As of Friday the ND and SYRIZA were almost equal with a slight advantage for SYRIZA.

[lutraphile]

Looks like a bit of a disaster. Syriza seems to have probably won is the one bit of good news, but Golden Dawn seems to be ahead of PASOK and the KKE to be the third biggest and Popular Unity quite likely did not make it into parliament at all.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/sep/20/greek-general-election-results-alexis-tsipras-syriza-meimarakis-new-democracy-live

Seat projection from The Guardian as follows (with 25% of votes counted):
SYRIZA - 144
ND - 75
Golden Dawn - 20
PASOK - 17
KKE - 15
ANEL - 10
To Potami - 10
Union of Centrists - 9

So basically SYRIZA will have to form a coalition with ANEL again, unless the KKE will form a govt with them OR Tsipras breaks another promise and goes into coalition with PASOK or To Potami.

Gutting that Popular Unity didn't get into parliament. What a sham this democracy can be. The tragedy is that with the fall of PASOK and even with an increase in votes for Golden Dawn, Greece is now looking relatively stable in terms of parties' votes/seats, with SYRIZA and New Democracy splitting the lion's share of the vote. In effect, Tsipras has turned SYRIZA into the new PASOK - an ineffective, centre-left party of capitalism and austerity.

The further tragedy is that it didn't have to be like this. Tsipras et al. could have made different decisions that would have intensified class warfare within Greece and within Europe and staved off another bailout for the Greek people. Of course, the fact that SYRIZA was not a party that was in and of the working class has meant that it has become very easy for Tsipras to heavily dilute the anti-capitalist elements of the SYRIZA programme. Just a thought - it would not be possible for another Tsipras to act in the same way if said leader faced greater pressure from a mass of organised workers outside of or indirectly affiliated to teh party, rather than the relatively weak pressure of a 'left platform' of a couple dozen MPs within the parliamentary party.

[ChangeAndChance]

Nauseating.

[PhoenixAsh]

Lowest voter turn out...just above 55.5%

[PhoenixAsh]

What these elections show is that voters are more concerned with staying in the EU than austerity.

[Eagnor]

Syriza is not against NATO, UE, euro (money) or privatizations. The only way is to support KKE.

[PhoenixAsh]

I got a lot of chatter on my feed about the KKE's +1% (0.08) gain in the elections. People interpreted this as a gain because of SYRIZA.

However...since voter turnout is -7% in respect to January the KKE got -38000 votes in comparison to January. Nominally they did worse. The 0.08% rise is because of low voter turn out.

[Futility Personified]

Does anyone know why the greeks are so in favour of remaining in the EU?

[Emmett Till]

Does anyone know why the greeks are so in favour of remaining in the EU?

Simple. Greece has little industry, and is heavily dependent on European trade. Moreover, at first Greece benefitted, as the EU is after all a capitalist alliance to exploit the rest of the world, especially Africa. So at first Greece got some crumbs off the table.

But now, the downside of being a second class citizen of the EU are getting more and more evident daily, so Greeks were quite willing to go along with SYRIZA telling the EU to get stuffed. But when it turned out it was just a pose, well, the Greeks wanted to see a real alternative to SYRIZA before abandoning it.

The ex-SYRIA Popular Unity crowd envisioned a capitalist non-austerity Greece outside the EU, which just about everyone in Greece knew by now was absurd. And the KKE, which had discredited itself by essentially abstaining on the EU Memorandum, only called for "socialism in one country" in Greece, like a micro version of Russia under Stalin.

A lesser evil compaqred to what the EU is now doing to Greece, with SYRIZA's full cooperation, but still hardly an attractive vision.