Greek Elections 2023: Mitsotakis’ 11-stop road trip to Crete

With a two-day road trip to four prefectures, which were (also) a personal election bet for Kyriakos Mitsotakis, he chooses to open the new cycle of his pre-election tours. With a final horizon of June 25, Mitsotakis places his homeland, Crete, at the starting point of the race.

Greek Elections 2023: Mitsotakis sees inflation as a lingering problem

Only this time the leader of New Democracy will visit the whole island, from Sitia to Therisos, with the aim of conveying (as he will do in all tours) the blue message of self-reliance. Crete for the first time on May 21 came under the electoral influence of New Democracy, as the faction emerged first in all four regional units, while in two (in Rethymno and Lasithi) PASOK emerged as the second force, knocking down the percentages of SYRIZA.

“Let’s do even better”

“I will run all over Crete, I will go to towns and villages. It is an opportunity for me to thank my fellow citizens, because, indeed, what happened in Crete gave me great – not only political – but also personal satisfaction” Mitsotakis said in an interview, Monday, on MEGA channel. “The Cretans trusted me and it’s an opportunity to thank them and ask them to do even better in the June 25 elections,” he added.

Mitsotakis’ route, after the unofficial start of the campaign yesterday in the Western sector of Athens which also changed “hands”, includes 11 stations. First, Lasithi (Siteia, Makri Gialos, Ierapetra, Agios Nikolaos), which Mitsotakis had not visited in the previous period.

Tonight the keynote speech will be given in the square of Agios Titos in Heraklion. Tomorrow he will be in Rethymno and Chania: in Perama Mylopotamou, in Vryses Apokoronou, in Rethymnon Town Hall Square, in Platanias, in Tzanakaki Square in Kasteli Kissamos, in Therisos.

Changing balances

The electoral “battle” of Crete still has a high symbolic weight (beyond the essential one) for New Democracy as well as for SYRIZA and PASOK. After all, during the pre-election period for the May 21 ballot, strong… forces from all three party headquarters had dropped in on the four prefectures.

The localism of the leader of Harilaou Trikoupis Nikos Androulakis fatally created new data on the island of a total of 551,705 registered voters, which had a solid center-left direction – once a “green” castle and later “pink” until the result of the May 21 contest was known , as Alexis Tsipras had won all counties in 2019.

The goal of the ND was to change the balance and its expectation was to capture an extensive diffusion of the center-left vote. Ahead of the new match, the blue ones are essentially seeking a reaffirmation of… blue all over the map of Crete.

The “winner’s wind”

Behind the two-day tour of Mitsotakis there is also symbolism. First, the leader of New Democracy wants to “honor” as much as possible the regions where the center-right faction achieved electoral upsets – hence the plan of the blue tours includes all regions that changed “color” on the electoral map on the evening of May 21 (Achaia , Western Attica, etc.).

Secondly, Mitsotakis seeks to give further… momentum to the so-called “winner’s wind”, expecting the attendance of more voters – citizens who did not support New Democracy in the recent contest.

Thirdly, he wants to emphatically send the message that “on June 25 we are voting for the government and not for the opposition” from constituencies in which SYRIZA and PASOK will fight hard again.

Fourth, the tour is expected to have a strong personal element. In Therisos of Chania, at the foot of the White Mountains, where Mitsotakis is expected to finish his tour tomorrow, he himself found himself in 2018, launching an ecological action – an initiative of the “Konstantinos K. Mitsotakis” Foundation entitled “Konstantinos Mitsotakis Journey: A Model Ecological Action, from the Cretan to the Libyan Sea through the White Mountains”.