ABSTRACT
In the final pre-dictatorship elections in 1964, the Centre Union registered the highest share of the vote attained by any single party since the United Nationalists’ Front received 55% of the vote in 1946. National parliamentary elections have been for a unicameral legislature, the Vouli, with the exception of a short-lived elected upper chamber which existed from 1929 to 1935, under the First Republic. The new system proved effective: in six of the eight elections for which it was used, it gave a working parliamentary majority to the first party, frequently on the basis of a minority popular vote. The degree of ‘disproportionality’ of the system has been somewhat akin to that of simple plurality systems. The comparison of regional voting behaviour is based on the number of those registered to vote in each region, although there is a well-established practice in Greece of residents in one area maintaining their voting rights in another area.
