Snap parliamentary elections were held in Greece on 21 May 2023. All 300 seats in the Hellenic Parliament were contested. They were the first elections since 1990 not to be held under a bonus seats system, due to amendments to the electoral law made in 2016. Instead, a purely proportional system was used.
The New Democracy of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis achieved an unexpected victory defying the opinion polls, while Mitsotakis' political opponents alleged fraud. As the election did not result in any party gaining a majority, and no coalition government was formed by any of the parties eligible to do so, Mitsotakis called for another snap election in June. On 24 May 2023, as required by Greece's constitution, President Katerina Sakellaropoulou appointed Ioannis Sarmas to be the caretaker prime minister for the interim.
Background
On 8 February 2023 Parliament voted to prohibit parties led nominally or actually by convicts from running in the elections, a provision possibly applicable in the case of the National Party – Greeks party. New Democracy and PASOK voted for the law, while the Communist Party of Greece, Greek Solution and MeRA25 voted against, with Syriza voting present.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited President Katerina Sakellaropoulou on 22 April 2023 in order to request the dissolution of the Parliament due to a national issue of extraordinary importance (pursuant to Article 41 of the Constitution of Greece); the issue cited was the need of political stability for the achievement of investment-grade. The election day was set for Sunday 21 May, a day before the end of the 30-day period within which elections must be held following the dissolution of the Parliament.
A large number of parties, mostly of the far right, were stopped from running in the elections either because of legal or bureaucratic reasons.
Electoral system
The electoral law under which the 2023 elections were held was passed in 2016 by the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government. Under the Constitution, amendments to the electoral law come into effect starting from the second election to be held following their passage, unless they pass with a supermajority.
SYRIZA-ANEL's 2016 law established a purely proportional system with a 3% electoral threshold. It ditched the 50-seat majority bonus, which had been in place since 1990.
In January 2020, soon after returning to power, New Democracy, which has always been a proponent of majority bonuses since 1974, passed a new electoral law to reinstate the bonus, albeit under a different formula. The party list with the most votes would receive up to 50 extra seats, benefitting disproportionally under a new sliding scale: It gets at least 20 extra seats (assuming it receives at least 25% of the vote) plus another extra seat for every half percentage point between 25% and 40%, for a total of 50 extra seats when reaching at least 40% of the vote. Only the remaining seats (at least 250) are proportionally distributed among all parties above 3% (including the largest party itself). This 2020 law would take effect starting from the next Greek election after the May 2023 election (which turned about to be just a month later in June 2023, as election winners New Democracy wanted the extra seats to gain an absolute majority of seats).
A 2019 law granted the right to vote for Greeks abroad which have lived for two years in Greece during the previous 35 years and who have submitted a tax return during the year of the election or the previous year. Voters from abroad choose the national-wide ballot of their desired party without choosing candidates, and their vote is counted equally in final results. In this election only 22,857 people from the Greek diaspora were registered as voters, much fewer than expected, because of the legal restrictions in place.
Voting was theoretically compulsory, with voter registration being automatic, but, just as it happened in previous years, none of the penalties and sanctions in place for those who did not vote were enforced.
Campaign
Officially, the election period began on 22 April, although the parties had begun to intensify their campaigning in the days after the first announcement of the date of election. The Greek politicians have employed various methods to outreach their positions, such as town hall meetings, speeches in cafes and squares, methods which are employed both by Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Alexis Tsipras.