Greek Parliamentary Elections
AS OF 2026-08-30 · 61 CONTESTS · parliamentary, 25 June 2023 · WIKIPEDIA, NATIONAL ELECTORAL AUTHORITIES
Next election · parliamentary, expected 2027 · Capital · Athens in the metro rankings →
Every Greek parliamentary election from 1862 to June 2023: the constitutional kingdom and its parties named after men, the National Schism, the civil war and the colonels, the two-party metapolitefsi, the crisis that destroyed it in three years, and the fifty-seat bonus that decides who governs.
The bonus
50
seats handed to the largest party under the 2023 rules
Elections since 1862
61
on file
Two in one year
1989, 2012, 2015, 2023
four times a single election failed to produce a government
The chronology
Every Greek parliamentary election, newest first, era by era. The colonels' seven years and the Metaxas dictatorship appear as the gaps they were.
After the crisis · 2023–
The bonus was abolished, then restored. May 2023 produced a parliament under the old proportional rules that nobody could govern from, so a second election in June ran under the new rules and handed New Democracy a majority. The left is now split four ways where Syriza stood alone.
The crisis · 2012–2019
The debt crisis destroyed the two-party system in a single cycle. PASOK went from governing party to 12% in three years, Syriza from a fringe to power, and Golden Dawn into parliament. Two elections in 2012 and two in 2015, a referendum that rejected the bailout terms the government then accepted, and a bonus of fifty seats that decided who governed.
Metapolitefsi · 1974–2009
The junta collapsed over Cyprus and Karamanlis returned from Paris to build a republic that lasted. A referendum ended the monarchy, the Communist Party was legalised after twenty-seven years, and from 1981 New Democracy and PASOK alternated in power with reinforced-proportional majorities, a two-party system as settled as any in Europe.
Civil war and its long shadow · 1946–1964
The 1946 election was held under a boycott by the left and won by the royalists; the civil war that followed ran to 1949 and its losers stayed banned from politics for a generation. Centre-right governments then held power for fifteen years under electoral systems redrawn to keep them there, until Papandreou's Centre Union broke through in 1963.
The National Schism · 1920–1936
Venizelos against the crown, twice over, in a quarrel about which side to take in the First World War that outlived the war by twenty years. Between them sit the Asia Minor catastrophe and a million and a half refugees who changed the electorate permanently, a republic proclaimed in 1924 and abolished in 1935, and a run of elections whose results were repeatedly overturned by coup.
The constitutional kingdom · 1862–1915
Otto was deposed in 1862 and the constitution of 1864 gave Greece universal male suffrage, decades ahead of most of Europe. What it did not give was stable government: the king still picked ministries until the 1875 principle of dedilomeni forced him to appoint whoever held the chamber. The parties of the period are named after the men who led them, Trikoupis against Deligiannis, which tells you what they were.
The long arc in charts
Hover any point for the exact figure.
Turnout since 1926
Voting was compulsory in Greece from 1926 and enforcement was real: turnout sat above 75% for sixty years. It has fallen by more than twenty points since the crisis, and the fine has not been levied in decades.
The largest party's share
Two-party Greece peaked at PASOK's 48% in 1981. Nothing since 2012 has come close, which is precisely why the seat bonus was invented and then repeatedly rewritten.
Records & superlatives
How Greek elections work
Reinforced proportional representation
Greece has spent most of its democratic history topping up the largest party's seats. The bonus has been as large as fifty seats, was abolished for the May 2023 election and restored for the June one, which is why two votes six weeks apart produced completely different parliaments from almost identical results.
A 3% threshold with teeth
Parties below 3% take nothing, and in a fragmented field that has repeatedly wasted a tenth of the vote. The threshold is also why the Greek left keeps merging and splitting: below it, votes vanish.
Parties named after men
For the first fifty years on this page the parties are the Supporters of Trikoupis, of Deligiannis, of Theotokis. They were personal followings rather than programmes, which is why the chamber could turn over completely from one election to the next.
Elections that were not held
The gap between 1964 and 1974 is the colonels. The gap between 1936 and 1946 is the Metaxas dictatorship, the occupation and the start of the civil war. Both are marked rather than skipped.