Greece’s Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and his conservative party, New Democracy, won a big victory in the country’s elections. However, they didn’t win enough seats to form a government. This means there will be another election in a month. Here are five important things to know about the election:
1. New Democracy won 40.79% of the vote, beating the leftist Syriza party by over 20 points. This is New Democracy’s best result since 2007.
2. Under Greece’s proportional representation system, New Democracy won 146 seats in the 300-deputy parliament. This is five seats short of a majority.
3. The former Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, lost his fourth straight election to Mitsotakis. His party, Syriza, lost 600,000 votes compared to the last election.
4. Many people were worried that there would be low voter turnout, but in the end, nearly 61% of Greeks voted.
5. Despite recent scandals and criticism of the ruling party, conservative voters forgave Mitsotakis and re-elected his transport minister. Surprisingly, a third of young voters (aged 17-24) also sided with the conservatives.
The new election will be held on June 25 and will have different rules that give bonus seats to the winner.
