Open data on non-voting in Greece

iMEdD Lab has collected historical data for elections turnout, on national level, from 1974 to 2024 for different types of elections in Greece: parliamentary, municipal, and European elections. We have also collected data, on subdistrict level, for the participation of Greek citizens specifically in the recent parliamentary elections (June 2023), municipal elections (2023 & 2019), as well as European elections (2024 & 2019). The team worked to collect the data and transform them into machine-readable datasets from May to November 2023, as part of the cross-border project “The Non-Voter Time Bomb”, led by Divergente with the contribution of twelve other journalistic organizations —members of the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet). iMEdD Lab updated the datasets delivered here with elections turnout data for Greece after the EU elections in June 2024.  

The data were collected from official online sources, including different websites/webpages of the Ministry of Interior and .pdf files provided online by the same Ministry (see an example here), which is the officially responsible body for releasing information about election data. The data were also derived from the website of the Hellenic Agency for Local Development and Local Government (EETAA), which provides online historical data about the municipal elections in the country. 

The dataset above presents abstention data on all types of elections throughout the years. More specifically: 

• National-level data for parliamentary elections in Greece, from 2023 back to 1974. 

Please note that the concept of rounds does not apply to national elections in Greece. The election period begins anew each time. However, when elections are held more than once a year, this is indicated in the column “Round” when the relevant value is “I” or “II.”  

• Data for municipal elections, on national level, from the most recent ones in October 2023 back to 1975.  For municipal elections, a second round applies, and each round is indicated in the column “Round” with the relevant value “1” or “2”.  

• Data for EU parliament elections in Greece, on national level, from the most recent ones in 2024 back to 1981, when Greeks voted for the EU parliament for the first time. 

The year 1981 was not a general European election year but was only for Greece as a new member of the Union.  

In that dataset, you may find the following variables (columns): 

• Registration (number of people): calculated by the working team when not available by the source* 

• Total Vote (number of people)): calculated by the working team when not available by the source* 

• Total Vote in % 

• Voter Abstention (number of people): calculated by the working team 

• Voter Abstention in %: calculated by the working team 

• Blank votes (number of people) 

• Blank votes in %: calculated by the working team when not available by the source 

• Null votes (number of people) 

• Null votes in %: calculated by the working team when not available by the source  

• Blank/Null votes (number of votes): sometimes given as a total by the source or otherwise is calculated by the working team when blank and null votes are provided separately 

• Blank/Null votes in %: calculated by the working team when not available by the source 

• Political party winner 

• Political party winner (Latin) 

• Political party winner – Nº of voters 

• Political party winner – % of voters 

• Round: tagged by the working team as indicated above 

• Source: provides the link from which each of the data has been derived 

What you need to know about the data  

• When the source has published the data listed, they are used as is. However, in many cases, we calculated the figures given for specific variables as mentioned above. 

• Missing values in the dataset mean data is not offered by the source, and calculations/aggregations are impossible.  

• In the case of municipal elections, when EETAA is our original online source, the sum of registered people and the total votes are aggregations/calculations made by the working team after studying thousands of different .csv files with elections results per municipality.  
• Specifically in the case of municipal elections data for 1975, found in this .pdf file as supplied by the Ministry of Interior, the source includes only areas with more than 2,000 residents. We excluded data about the Municipality of Mantoudi since the source refers to the total vote without including the number of registered voters (see page 29 of the .pdf file).  

The table above shows the dataset of European elections data per municipality in Greece, in 2024 and back in 2019. The data derived from the official portal of the Ministry of Interior for elections results in 2024 (last fetched in July 2024) and 2019.  

The table above shows the dataset of national election data per municipality level in Greece’s most recent parliamentary elections, which were held on June 25, 2023. The data derived from the official portal of the Ministry of Interior for elections results. 

The table above shows the dataset of municipal election data per municipality level in Greece, in 2023 and back in 2019. The data include results for both election rounds for each year and was derived from the official portal of the Ministry of Interior for elections results in 2023 and the website of the Ministry of Interior for 2019.   

Those subdistrict datasets contain the main columns mentioned above, when referred to the national-level elections results, as well as the following variables (columns): 

• Electoral District (name): the electoral district where the municipality belongs (in Greek); please note that electoral districts might differ compared to the geographical regions  

• Electoral District (Latin name): the electoral district where the municipality belongs (in English); please note that electoral districts might differ compared to the geographical regions  

• Geographical Code: the 4-digit municipality code  

• LAU Code: the Local Administrative Unit (LAU) code as maintained by Eurostat 

• Municipality (name): the name of the municipality in Greek 

• Municipality (Latin name): the name of the municipality in English 

All subdistrict elections data provided is collected and processed by iMEdD Lab. Original data from official sources is publicly available only in .html format or in different .xls files. 

What you need to know about the data  

• Voter abstention data (number of people and percentages) are calculated by the working team  

• Missing values in the datasets mean that data is not available by the source, or calculations/aggregations were not possible. 

• The working team tagged the winner party (in Greek and in English) for European and parliamentary elections. Those values might differ compared to the full official names of the parties as mentioned by the source. Winner party data is not included in the municipal elections’ results dataset, since, in Greece, people do not vote for parties but for mayors: candidates might belong to a specific party or not, and they can also be supported by one or more parties.  

• The working team noticed that, for most of the variables in all subdistrict data provided here, when we sum up subdistrict data, those figures are slightly different from the ones provided by the source at the national level. For instance, for the parliamentary elections 2023, the calculated sum of registered voters per municipality is 9782351, which differs from the total number of registered voters in Greece, reported by the source as 9813595 for the same year.  

All datasets are openly available on our relevant GitHub repository.

Most of the work hereby presented was done in the context of iMEdD Lab’s participation in the cross-border project “The Non-Voter Time Bomb”, which was implemented under the coordination of Divergente, in collaboration with EDJNet and DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte.

Research, data processing and project management for iMEdD Lab: Kelly Kiki
Additional research and contribution: Chrysoula Marinou