This is worth reading, hes on the Syriza CC but its quite a frank discussion of the results and possibilities Even if beating New Democracy by 8.5 percent is an important victory, we have to explain why the dynamic behind Syriza was not as great as we had hoped. One striking aspect of the results is that, while nationally Syriza improved on its June 2012 and European elections score by almost 10 percent, it made much less progress in the main urban centers (particularly Athens and Thessaloniki), where it only gained 6 percent. So while in June 2012 its best result was in the very working-class, emblematically “Red” Second Piraeus constituency (if we don’t include Xanthi, where it enjoyed massive support from the Turkish-speaking minority), this time around it did better in seven other areas (including former Pasok bastions like Crete and the northern Peloponnese) than in the Piraeus industrial belt — though here too it went from 37 to 42 percent. Thus Syriza made advances above all in rural and semi-urban areas and middling provincial towns: in a Greece whose political behavior is more conservative and “legitimist.” Its influence in the country is thus now more homogeneous, as it makes its appearance as a legitimate “party of government”; but it lacked the dynamic to be able to increase its advantage in the major cities and get the extra seats it needed in the mega-constituencies of Athens and Thessaloniki. Its electoral profile is now that of a more “cross-class” party, without the “unevenness” of 2012: its support is less distinctly rooted among the wage-earners of the main urban centers, even if its influence among this population is significant and they do make up a major part of its vote.:
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 11:10:01 +0000
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