Greece: legislative elections results 2023, by seats won

On the 25th of June 2023, Greek voters went to the polls for the second time in the space of two months, after having voted in legislative elections already in May. As the prior elections had not resulted in an outright majority for any party (New Democracy won roughly 49 percent of seats), nor could the parties agree to form a coalition following the election, new elections were called for June. In the second election, New Democracy once more came on top, winning almost 53 percent of the seats, while they took 40.55 percent of the overall votes cast. New Democracy's leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis will now serve his second term as Greek Prime Minister following the party's electoral success.

Greece's unusual elections of 2023

The Greek legislative elections of 2023 took place under quite unusual circumstances, as the May and June elections used different methods of assigning seats to the parties. The left-wing coalition government led by Syriza in 2016 had passed a law turning Greece's electoral system into a purely proportional system, meaning that parties would get roughly the same share of seats in parliament as they received from in the share of votes cast (once the party achieved three percent of the national vote).

This system would replace Greece's previous majority bonus system, which gave the winning party of the election up to a 50-seat bonus, in order to facilitate that party forming a majority in parliament and becoming a stable government. As New Democracy returned to power in 2019, they passed a law reinstating a majority bonus system, but this would only be able to come into place the election after the next election. This is why when no government could be formed following the May legislative election, the June election provided a decisive result as New Democracy was handed a substantial majority bonus, meaning that they now form a clear majority of seats in the Greek Parliament.

The issues which mattered to Greeks in the 2023 elections

Greece has been by far the most economically troubled European Union member state for the past 15 years, during which time the country has been subject to several IMF bailout packages and has imposed harsh austerity measures on its citizens. Greece had elected a left-wing anti-austerity government in 2015, led by Syriza's Alexei Tsipras, however, the coalition's inability to renegotiate the terms of Greece's bailout packages and to avoid the implementation of the structural adjustments to the economy demanded by its creditors meant that many voters became disillusioned with the left. In 2019 voters chose to give the center-right a mandate to govern, just as Greece exited its bailout packages and emerged from almost a decade of recession.

The terms of political debate in Greece have shifted in recent years - the country's economy has grown quickly in the post-COVID reopening and has benefitted from EU stimulus funds from the NextGenEU packages, of which it was the biggest recipient, proportional to the size of its economy. New Democracy focused their election campaign on emphasizing these positive developments, while promising future growth and tax cuts. The 2023 elections were also informed by two tragedies which struck Greece this year - first, in February, Greece experienced a train crash which killed 57 people, which led to many people pointing to the country's crumbling infrastructure, while later during the campaign for the June election, a boat carrying migrants from Libya to Greece sank, leaving 82 people dead and hundreds missing. These tragedies contributed to a poisoned political atmosphere, which benefitted the fringes of the far-right (Spartans), as well as the far-left (Course of Freedom).