Greek legislative election, 1956

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Greece
This article is part of the series: Politics and government of Greece

Constitution Parliament Presidium Conference of Presidents Parliamentary Committees President: Karolos Papoulias Presidential Departments Prime Minister: Kostas Karamanlis Cabinet Judicial system Supreme Special Court Court of Cassation Council of State Chamber of Accounts Administrative divisions Peripheries Super-prefectures Prefectures Communities and Municipalities Elections: 2006 (local) 2007 (legislative) Political parties Constituencies Politics of the European Union Foreign relations
Other countries · Atlas Politics Portal view • talk • edit

The Greek legislative election of the 19 February 1956 resulted in victory for Constantine Karamanlis and his National Radical Union party. It was the first general election in Greece in which women had the right to vote^[1].

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 dextrous 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.

The National Radical Union won thanks to a complex and controversial electoral system, enacted by Karamanlis. A "first past the post" system was applied in the rural constituencies where the National Radical Union was expected to gain a plurality, while proportional representation was reserved for the urban constituencies, where the Liberal Democratic Union coalition party was expected to lead^[2]^[3]. As a result, the Liberal Democratic Union coalition party lost the election, in spite of getting a slim plurality of votes.

The Liberal Democratic Union included, among others:

Centrists led by Georgios Papandreou,
The Liberal Party, led by Sophoklis Venizelos and
The left-wing EDA, led by Ioannis Passalidis.

A few years later, Georgios Papandreou and Sophoklis Venizelos renounced their alliance with EDA, thus breaking up the Liberal Democratic Union .

Summary of the 19 February 1956 Greek Parliament election results			Votes			Seats
			No.	%	+− %	No.	+−
	National Radical Union	Constantine Karamanlis	1,594,112	47.38		165
	Liberal Democratic Union	Georgios Papandreou Sophoklis Venizelos Ioannis Passalidis	1,620,007	48.15		132
	Progressive Party	Spyros Markezinis	74,545	2.22		-
	People's Social Party		29,375	0.88		-
	Party of Christian Democracy		449	0.01		-
	Lists of Independents		31,022	0.92		3
	Others		14,851	0.44		-
Totals				100.00		300
Constituencies				41		300
Valid votes			3,364,361
Invalid votes			15,084	(0.44%)
Total number of votes			3,379,445	(74,79%)
Valid electorate			4,507,907
Population			7,395,219
Source: Texts of Constitutional History, vol. 2, p. 835.

v • d • e Greek parliamentary elections

1843 · 1844 · 1847 · 1850 · 1853 · 1856 · 1859 · 1861 · 1862 · 1865 · 1868 · 1869 · 1872 · 1873 · 1874 · 1875 · 1879 · 1881 · 1885 · 1887 · 1890 · 1892 · 1895 · 1899 · 1902 · 1905 · 1906 · 1910 (Aug) · 1910 (Nov) · 1912 · 1915 (May) · 1915 (Dec) · 1920 · 1923 · 1926 · 1928 · 1932 · 1933 · 1935 · 1936 · 1946 · 1950 · 1951 · 1952 · 1956 · 1958 · 1961 · 1963 · 1964 · 1974 · 1977 · 1981 · 1985 · 1989 (Jun) · 1989 (Nov) · 1990 · 1993 · 1996 · 2000 · 2004 · 2007

Greek Senate elections

1929 · 1932

Greek referendums

1920 · 1924 · 1935 · 1946 · 1968 · 1973 · 1974