The current electoral system of Greece was introduced in 2004 with the law 3231/2004 and was amended in 2008 with the law 3636/2008. However, the first election that it was implemented was that of 2007 because of a provision in the Greek constitution which prohibits any changes in the electoral law from being implemented in the next election.
The electoral system of Greece has a “mixed” logic that produces majoritarian results in the way it distributes parliamentary seats between parties. The main logic is quite simple: 250 out of the 300 parliament seats are distributed proportionally between all the parties that reach the 3% nationwide electoral threshold. The rest 50 seats go to the first party as a “bonus”.
There are 56 electoral districts in Greece, ranging from 1 to 42 seats each, where a total of 288 MPs are elected. The remaining 12 MPs are elected through nationwide lists.
However, the way that the seats are attributed to specific MPs is rather complicated because of the 50-seat bonus. Thus representational paradoxes are not uncommon. For example, it is possible in some districts for the second party to elect more MPs than the first party, while in some other districts it is not uncommon for the first party to have all 3 or 4 MPs with no other party represented in the parliament.
Metapolls.net
