1956 Greek legislative election

Parliamentary elections were held in Greece on 19 February 1956.[1] The result was a victory for Konstantinos Karamanlis and his National Radical Union (ERE) by securing the electoral vote despite trailing in the popular vote, due to gerrymandering employed by ERE. It was the first general election in Greece in which women had the right to vote although women had first voted in a by-election in Thessaloniki Prefecture in 1953 in which the first female MP was elected.

1956 Greek legislative election
19 February 1956
All 300 seats in the Hellenic Parliament
151 seats needed for a majority
  First party Second party
 
Leader Konstantinos Karamanlis Georgios Papandreou
Party ERE DE
Seats won 165 132
Popular vote 1,594,112 1,620,007
Percentage 47.38% 48.15%
Prime Minister before election

Konstantinos Karamanlis
ERE

 Prime Minister after election

Konstantinos Karamanlis
ERE

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Although the Democratic Union, a coalition of centrist parties, received a slim plurality of votes, the conservative governing party, the National Radical Union, won the most seats due to a complex and controversial electoral system enacted by Karamanlis. A "first past the post" system was applied in the rural constituencies where the ERE was expected to gain a plurality, while proportional representation was reserved for the urban constituencies, where the Democratic Union was expected to lead.[2][3] As a result, the Democratic Union came up 19 seats short of a majority.

The Democratic Union included centrist parties, as the Liberal Democratic Union led by Sophoklis Venizelos and the Liberal Party of Georgios Papandreou, as well as the left-wing EDA, led by Ioannis Passalidis. A few years later, Sophoklis Venizelos and Georgios Papandreou renounced their alliance with EDA, breaking up the Democratic Union.

Background

In 1955, Karamanlis was chosen by the King Paul I as successor of prime minister General Alexandros Papagos, who had just died. The decision was controversial, as Karamanlis was not a leading member of Papagos' party, and caused the vehement reactions of the party's two most prominent members, Stefanos Stefanopoulos and Panagiotis Kanellopoulos.

Nevertheless, Karamanlis, thanks to the support of the royal family and his own dexterous handlings, managed to establish himself as a strong leader. After stabilizing his leadership, he dissolved the Greek Rally party and created his own conservative right-wing party, the National Radical Union, which also comprised some prominent centrists (Evangelos Averoff, Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, Konstantinos Tsatsos) and went on to dominate the Greek political scene for the next 8 years.

Results
PartyVotes%Seats
Democratic Union1,620,00748.15132
National Radical Union1,594,11247.38165
Progressive Party74,5452.220
List of Independents31,0220.922
Popular Social Party29,3750.870
Christian Democracy4490.010
Independents14,8510.441
Total3,364,361100.00300
Valid votes3,364,36199.55
Invalid/blank votes15,0840.45
Total votes3,379,445100.00
Registered voters/turnout4,507,90774.97
Source: Ministry of the Interior, Nohlen & Stöver

References
  1. Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p830 ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7
  2. Grilla, Michael (2007-05-22). "Ο εκλογικός νόμος". www.eleftheria.gr. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2022-12-07.
  3. ""Το Βήμα" newspaper, 12 Nov 2000, "Δημοκρατία Διάτρητη" (In Greek)". Archived from the original on 2007-09-29. Retrieved 2007-08-26.
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