Greek elections: New Democracy eyes the… right, the North and popular neighborhoods – “Roadmaps” for a door-to-door campaign

Kyriakos Mitsotakis officially pressed the second election alarm button for the blue camp, giving the guidelines of the new pre-election campaign. In an otherwise celebratory gathering where hugs and smiles prevailed along with new stakes of victory for June 25, yesterday at the New Democracy headquarters on Piraeus Street, the leader gave the orders “moderation”, “programmatic reason” , “modesty”. And, wanting to pick up the euphoric atmosphere after the May 21 election result, he named the main “opponents” of the faction.

Mitsotakis’ three instructions to the candidates

On the one hand, there is “the complacency, the satisfaction of victory, the relaxation” in the words of Mitsotakis – and with all that this implies for the party apparatus that is activated by monitoring the style and content of the pre-election activity of each official.

On the other hand are, according to Mitsotakis, “the problems of the citizens”. With all this implies for New Democracy officials’ need not to cultivate an outward image of complacency, instead to emphasize that there is an understanding of the citizens’ difficulties and a plan to solve them – not that the country has turned into a “paradise” in the last four years .

At the turning points

Based on these, the candidates and primarily the so-called “first-class” cadres who won the electoral battle on May 21 are (also) invited to special missions away from home, i.e. to visits outside the boundaries of their electoral district.

The “roadmaps” have already started to be handed out. There are MPs who are “charged” with crucial visits many kilometers away from their headquarters, even though the central directive to all is to put the burden on their own constituencies. Newly elected in the Northern sector of Athens will soon go up to Kozani, another from the south of Athens is preparing for Evros, someone from the 1st Athens district will go down to Crete, etc.

In any case, with or without Mitsotakis, the ND wants to focus on the points on the map where it achieved reversals on May 21: Crete (where Mitsotakis will be on a… road trip tomorrow and the day after), Achaia (one of the “castles” of the Center Left ), western Attica, western Athens (where Mitsotakis will walk this afternoon).

Targeted

Especially the popular neighborhoods, together with the North almost in its entirety as well as the considered “castles” of the others, prefectures that changed hands on May 21, are in the target of New Democracy. There, the blue team’s strategy is primarily about “openings”.

In other words, the targeted messages both to the far right of New Democracy, where mobility and dynamics concern the center-right faction given the goal of self-reliance, as well as to the centrist audience anxious to “hear” anew the stakes of governability.

What, commonly, New Democracy exorcises are leakages of votes, either loosely towards small right-wing parties, or towards PASOK (or even SYRIZA) in the context of the “battle” in the Center-Left. Mitsotakis’ two recent asides speak volumes for themselves – indirectly to those from PASOK and to the rightmost of the New Democracy reservoir.

“There is only one proposal for governance in the country, we vote for the government and not the opposition,” Mitsotakis’ emphasized, wanting to shift the center of gravity of the post-election debate. And those who “have real patriotic sensibilities,” as he has said, “let them see who the patriots are in practice and who are the patriots in theory, and consider whether it is really worth while to give their vote to parties which may not have been tried; protest parties that don’t really have much to contribute to governance or if they want to align themselves with a large patriotic progressive front that has demonstrated in practice how it understands responsible patriotism”