Parliamentary elections were held in
Greece on 19 February 1956.
Dieter Nohlen
Dieter Nohlen (born 6 November 1939) is a German academic and political scientist. He currently holds the position of Emeritus Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Heidelberg. An expe ...
& Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p830 The result was a victory for
Konstantinos Karamanlis
Konstantinos G. Karamanlis ( el, Κωνσταντίνος Γ. Καραμανλής, ; 8 March 1907 – 23 April 1998), commonly anglicised to Constantine Karamanlis or just Caramanlis, was a four-time Prime Minister of Greece and two-term presi ...
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.
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.
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
Sofoklis Venizelos (, also transliterated as Sophocles Venizelos) (3 November 1894 – 7 February 1964) was a Greeks, Greek politician, who three times served as Prime Minister of Greece – in 1944 (in exile), 1950 and 1950–1951.
Life and ca ...
and the
Liberal Party of
Georgios Papandreou, as well as the left-wing
EDA EDA or Eda may refer to:
Computing
* Electronic design automation
* Enterprise Desktop Alliance, a computer technology consortium
* Enterprise digital assistant
* Estimation of distribution algorithm
* Event-driven architecture
* Exploratory ...
, led by
Ioannis Passalidis
Ioannis (Yianis) Passalidis ( el, Ιωάννης Πασαλίδης; 1886–1968) was a prominent member of the Greek Left and founder of the United Democratic Left party.
He was born in the village of Kutaisi, in nowadays Georgia (country), Geo ...
. 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
References
{{Greek elections
Parliamentary elections in Greece
Legislative election
A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...
1950s in Greek politics
Greece
Greece