Greek PM on the campaign trail in Thessaly

Ruling New Democracy party has been focusing for months on the difficulties experienced by the party from the Tempi gorge and further north in the pre-election period, exorcising the threat of voter flight of its ownelectorateeither to the right (in Western Macedonia, for example) or to the left (lower, in Thessaly) .

With the declared goal of self-reliance, the center-right faction is anxious to seal off speial interest groups, such as farmers, but also areas of confrontation, such as the Thessaly plain.

In this context, the Prime Minister is preparing messages for cohesion next Friday from Larissa, a point on the map that is not just nobody’s castle but is also treated as a barometer for nationwide polls.

The upcoming open speech of Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the “Alcazar” stadium in Larissa comes a week after the tour of Thessaly by Alexis Tsipras, which drove the government and the official opposition to lock horns especially over farmers. The prime minister’s presence in Larissa – against the background of local bets that Mitsotakis is looking at Thessaly for his own candidacy – signals the government’s anxiety to show that it has not lost touch with the rural population in a period of pressure due to the energy crisis (indicative are the government initiatives on diesel used by farmers and outstanding compensations) and at the same time that it has answers for the urban population of the area.

Performance

In the 2019 elections, the performances of all parties in the Thessalian capital ranged close to their nationwide percentage. Indicatively, 39.30% for ND, 31.25% for SYRIZA, 8.79% for PASOK-KINAL, when their national votes were 39.85%, 31.53% and 8.10% respectively. A similar condition is also recorded in polls currently, according to valid information from confidential polling in this electoral district.

Sources with knowledge of these numbers convey that although New Democracy and SYRIZA register lower percentages, there is no reversal of correlations. This means that the governing party maintains a lead but also that SYRIZA maintains its base, with the comunist party-KKE’s traditional appeal among farmers. However, their choice for the ballots in Larissa says a lot about the way the government and SYRIZA approach the Thessalian plain. And these essentially reflect their intended, pan-Hellenic “message”: an attempt at broader representation, and therefore claiming other social and age groups. Hence, for the new entries in the candidate lists, the weight did not fall on farmers (there is a stock breeder on the PASOK ballot) but on persons with a wider footprint in the local community. Some come from local government, others are from the younger generation.

It is also indicative of the fact that Tsipras chose, from Thessaly, to address a wider social message – “not only to the left and centrists, even to the right”, he said from Karditsa, “mainly to those who are undecided”. In the same speech, he described New Democracy as the “tribe of the Patsis” (ousted MP who bought outstanding red loans) that is preparing a “raid”, referring to the case of the MP from Grevena that defamed the party. For this reason, Mitsotakis will take on this challenge by going to the Grevena single seat district directly from Larissa on Saturday and therefore returning to the North, which governing party is also monitoring, but for a different reason, because it recognizes that it cannot afford to lose its traditional voter base.