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POLITICAL COMMUNICATION AND PROFESSIONALISATION IN GREECE | 135

The mass media, highly politicised as they are, also conduct their own polls – as they do
in other countries.This means that, far more than just locating and reporting the ‘news’
itself, they can then comment on it, often with their own political ends in view. But polls
can go wrong, for either technical or political reasons: the sample may be too small, it
may be difficult to reach certain people, and so the sample used, even if large enough,
may not be truly representative of the population. Other technical difficulties abound.
Even in the best circumstances, Greece confronts the pollsters with a nightmarish
problem. Normally, upwards of 20% of those interviewed refuse to reveal how they
have voted in the past or to give any indication of which party they intend to support in
a forthcoming election. In political terms, opinion polls say that Greeks do not trust
politicians and political parties, or are not passionate about politics. These attitudes
expressed about their political institutions and leaders appear negative, but on the
other hand, in a country where politics is omnipresent and citizens are incorporated as
both participants and performers, many questions the pollsters typically ask are either
out of place or produce highly misleading replies. Greeks are often asked, for example,
whether they have problems related to the government (and who does not!). Needless
to say, the mass media are an essential part of this scenario.The politicians count on the
editorial and journalistic community to provide not just commentary but also
interpretation of what is projected by the polls. After a poll, analyses by journalists,
analysts and politicians are published in the press and discussed on the electronic
media (and vice versa). Because in the 2004 national elections it appeared that the
electoral race would be a tough one and extremely close right until the finish,there was
an unprecedented increase in the number of polls commissioned, at least by the media
(about one every three days). It is no coincidence that, during election campaigns, the
publication of poll results cannot be publicised 15 days prior to the election in the
newspapers,for example,and 30 days for television.

The central role of the media and the pollsters or the use of the opinion poll data are, in
my opinion, demonstrated in the case of the creation and demise of a political party,
but also in the choice of a political leader.

An example that illustrates the first point is when Dimitris Avramopoulos, in his second
term as the Athens Mayor, announced, on 18 December 2000, on TV the creation of a Political Communication and Professionalisation in Greece
new party which, three months later (on March 6, 2001), he called the ‘Movement of
Free Citizens’(KEP). Fifteen months later, he announced that his decision to suspend the
operations of KEP was due to ‘the excessive economic demands…and our refusal to
depend on powerful economic interests’. In fact, it was a party based, either in its
formation or in its demise, on the results of the pollsters. He received a strong start in
the opinion polls, but, despite the heavy promotion of the media, his party never
received more than 16% in the polls and in 2001 had slipped below 5%.

The second point is harder to illustrate. Polls seemed to have played a role in the
displacement of the old leadership that took place in both PASOK and New Democracy 137