Alexis Tsipras’s Greek Left Coalition (ELAS) and Nikos Androulakis’s PASOK are entering the final stretch of the battle for public opinion before polling comes to a halt for the summer.
These days, the final pre-July polls (both confidential and public) are being conducted, but the findings allow experienced pollsters to draw the key conclusions that the party leaderships of the so-called progressive camp will be called upon to study carefully.
The overall assessment—for this period—is as follows:ELAS is consolidating its second-place position in the party rankings, having already achieved a single-digit lead over New Democracy. The reasons cited, beyond the former prime minister’s personal appeal, are:
* First, Alexis Tsipras has succeeded in positioning himself as Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s “formidable opponent.” Consequently, the confidence he displayed during his recent speech in Nice—stating that “we can form a government whenever elections are held”—was deemed a “success,” rather than getting bogged down in squabbles with PASOK over who would come in second.
According to analysts, Mr. Tsipras addressed citizens who ardently want the government to be defeated in the elections and is motivating them to turn their attention (and cast their vote, when the time comes) toward his newly formed party.
“Don’t be surprised if you see ELAS soon reach 20%,” says an experienced pollster. He noted that the goal of “getting a significant number of left-wing voters off the couch”—voters who gave the then-SYRIZA (under Tsipras) 20% in the first elections of 2023—does not seem unattainable. “If he gets past this hurdle, he will have a solid chance of appealing to a portion of the 31.5% he received at the time of his defeat (in 2019),” they say.
* Second, they consider it a “major success” for Tsipras to have, from the day after the new party’s launch, showcased many different new faces who are “flooding” the media on a daily basis.
With this move, they note, the newly reinstated political leader has demonstrated that ELAS is not “SYRIZA 2” and that it attracts people from all segments of society, without featuring the old cadres of the former ruling party in its “front window.”
This image will also be reflected in ELAS’s new (provisional, until they are elected at the party’s first congress) governing bodies—the National Council and the Political Committee—as well as in the new sector heads. Announcements are expected later this week.
The …caveat analysts point out is the possibility of poor choices Mr. Tsipras might make regarding the “old guard” of SYRIZA and the roles he assigns them: “The mix of experience from the veterans and freshness from the newcomers isn’t easy and could spoil the formula,” is the recommendation.
PASOK: Mistakes and a Challenge
The same analysts appear cautious regarding PASOK’s performance, identifying two—plus one—mistakes in its strategy:
First, it maintains as its electoral goal “first place by a single vote,” which now seems overly ambitious given its third- or fourth-place standing in the polls.
Second, it also maintains the position that “post-election cooperation will only happen if we are the leading party; otherwise, we will remain in the opposition.”
The third reason, which stems from the previous two, is that this insistence by the PASOK leadership deprives its potential voters of the incentive to choose it at the polls, since the message they receive is that the party will not contribute to the formation of a government.
According to the same analysts, the recent (new) clash between Diamantopoulou and Douka further clouds the party’s image, which appears … torn between two souls: a center-right and a center-left “soul” are locked in a never-ending war, with the leadership remaining in the role of Pontius Pilate, leaving the audience bewildered.
Ch. Trikoupi is preparing to “give it her all” in the coming period to recoup some of the ground PASOK lost following the emergence of ELAS and to enter the (electoral?) September from a stronger position.
It is telling that many events are being planned this year to mark the 30th anniversary of the death of Andreas Papandreou, in an effort, on the one hand, to honor the party’s founder and, on the other, to stir the emotional responses of PASOK’s (old) base.
The main event will take place on Wednesday in Kalentzi, Achaea (Andreas’s birthplace), with Nikos Androulakis, George Papandreou, and Kostas Skandalidis as the keynote speakers.