Polling trend for the September 20th Greek parliamentary election
Events in Greece have been heartbreaking this year. In January's parliamentary elections, the country elected its most left-wing government in history. Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left), led by the charismatic Alexis Tsipras, came to power on a platform of overturning the years of fiscal austerity that were heartlessly imposed on Greece by Eurozone creditors, led primarily by Germany, in exchange for financial bailouts. This austerity has been counter-productive, neo-liberal class warfare from the start and it has produced an ongoing economic crisis on par with the Great Depression. One in three Greeks live in poverty or is at risk of it, while one in four are unemployed.
Whatever hopes progressives had for a change of course in Greece and the broader European Union have died since Syriza, with an economic gun pointed at its head, agreed to a harsh new bailout in July. Since no potential governing party opposed this bailout, devastating austerity will continue for the foreseeable future. Although the prospect of a forced Eurozone exit and the resulting economic chaos was too much for Syriza to bear, agreeing to a new bailout in complete opposition to its election promises caused its left flank to break away and form a new party, Popular Unity, which explicitly calls for an exit from the Eurozone.
It is against this backdrop that Greece will once again go to the polls on September 20th as Syriza's Tsipras seeks to shore up his support in parliament after Popular Unity's legislators defected. Two-hundred and fifty seats in Greece's unicameral parliament are elected by proportional representation, with parties needing 3 percent to win any seats. An additional 50 seats are given to whichever party comes in first, which makes winning a plurality extremely important, unlike in most proportional systems.
What looked like an easy win for Syriza prior to the bailout agreement has suddenly become a fiercely-close race with the pro-austerity, right-of-center New Democracy, who led the previous government. While bleeding support on the left to Popular Unity has hurt Syriza, it's clear that they have also lost support to the center. PASOK, formerly the main center-left social democratic party, has seen its numbers rebound slightly since January, while the more centrist Potami (The River) is holding steady and the Union of Centrists looks set to win seats for the first time.
Making matters even worse for Syriza, their junior coalition partner the Independent Greeks, a right-wing nationalist party that was nonetheless very anti-austerity, will likely lose seats and could very well fall below the 3 percent threshold. Current polling trends indicate that Syriza would almost certainly need support from a centrist party to form a majority after the election. The dogmatically Marxist-Leninist Communist Party and the outright neo-Nazi Golden Dawn are unacceptable partners who both are opposed to the current bailout, much like Popular Unity is. Were New Democracy to come in first it could form a coalition with the three centrist parties and exclude Syriza entirely.
How Greece's Eurozone debt crisis has played out sent a clear signal to similarly-positioned countries suffering under bailout austerity such as Spain: Don't dare elect left-wing anti-austerity parties, or you could become the next Greece. Spanish voters head to the polls in December in one of the most important Western elections left this year, but Syriza-ally Podemos (We Can), has seen its support drop this year despite the unpopularity of the incumbent right-of-center government. For many Europeans, austerity is here to stay until further notice.