Greek legislative election, 1958

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The Greek legislative election of the 19 February 1958 resulted in the second consecutive victory for Constantine Karamanlis and his National Radical Union party.

Constantine Karamanlis took the decision to call for early elections, after some of the most prominent members of the National Radical Union defected from the party, including George Rallis and Panagis Papaligouras. Although Karamanlis could have a parliamentary majority, he preferred to go for elections, in order to achieve a renewed public support.

The pretext of the defection was a new electoral law that Karamanlis passed. Rallis was opposed to the law, thinking that it is going to be extremely favorable for EDA, a party believed to be linked with the outlaw during this period Communist Party of Greece.

The outcome of the results proved that Rallis' "fears" were justified. EDA became the second biggest party, outvoting a divided centre.

Just after the elections Karamanlis formed a new government, taking back in his party the defectors.

Summary of the 11 May 1958 Greek Parliament election results			Votes			Seats
			No.	%	+− %	No.	+−
	National Radical Union	Constantine Karamanlis		41.46		171
	United Democratic Left	Ioannis Passalidis		24.42		79
	Liberal Party	Sophoklis Venizelos		20.67		36
	Progressive Rural Democratic Union	Georgios Papandreou		10.62		10
	Union of the People's Party	Konstantinos Tsaldaris		2.94		4
	Lists of Independents			0.1
	Others			0.06		-
Totals				100.00		300
Constituencies				55		300
Valid votes			3,847,785
Invalid votes			16,197	(0.32%)
Total number of votes			3,863,982	(75,4%)
Valid electorate			5,119,148
Population			7,395,219
Source: Texts of Constitutional History, vol. 2, p. 835.

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