Elections in Greece

At a national level, Greece holds elections (ekloges) for its legislature, the Hellenic Parliament.

Election of the legislature

The Greek Parliament (Voulí ton Ellínon) has 300 members, elected for a four-year term by a system of "reinforced" proportional representation. Of the 300 seats, 285 are allocated to 59 constituencies, 50 of which are multi-seat and 9 single-seat. The remaining 15 MPs are elected from nationwide party lists, of which 3 are required to represent the Greek diaspora. Seat allocation to individual parties is done on the basis of their nationwide vote share, provided they have reached the electoral threshold of 3%. In each constituency, voters may select the candidate or candidates of their choice by marking their name on the party ballot.

In 2016, the previous parliament, under a left-wing majority, abolished the reinforced proportionality system, which had been in effect since 2004. The previous system had been boosting the first party's seat count with 50 "bonus" seats, in order to facilitate single-party absolute majorities in parliament. It was replaced by a party-list proportional representation system, under which single-party parliamentary majorities, commonly achieved by first parties under previous electoral systems, could now only be achieved with a vote share of at least 45%, effectively making coalition governments the norm. On those grounds, and arguing that proportional representation would cause political instability, the new law was strongly contested by the conservative opposition and failed to get the two thirds supermajority required by the constitution for a new electoral system to be immediately applied in the next election.