Disy and Akel retain all seats, Elam rises to third

Disy and Akel retained all the seats they had held in the last parliament at Sunday’s election, defying pre-election polls which had predicted losses for both parties to win 17 and 15 seats respectively, as they had five years ago, while Elam rose to third place, doubling its tally of seats in the House from four to eight.

Additionally, while Diko fell to fourth place, the party managed to retain eight of the nine seats it held before election day, meaning that in spite of pre-election polls predicting substantial moves away from Cyprus’ traditional political parties at this parliamentary election, in the end, the traditional “big three” parties only lost one seat between them.

Despite the pre-election talk having been centred on the prospect of a diverse parliament comprising many parties, the next parliament will host fewer parties than its predecessor, with only six parties winning seats on Sunday, compared to the seven which won seats five years ago.

On this occasion, the “big three” and Elam will be joined in parliament by two new parties, with Dipa, Edek, and the Ecologists’ Movement making way for Alma and Direct Democracy Cyprus. Both will take four seats each.

In terms of vote share, Disy recorded a very minor drop, from 27.8 per cent five years ago to 27.2 per cent on Sunday, though the party did win more votes on Sunday than in 2021, breaking the barrier of 100,000 votes for the first time since 2016.

Akel, meanwhile, took a slightly greater share of the vote than last time around, rising from 22.3 per cent to 23.9 per cent, though Diko fell from 11.3 per cent to 10 per cent exactly.

Elam’s vote share grew from 6.8 per cent five years ago to 10.9 per cent this time around, while Alma and Direct Democracy Cyprus took 5.8 per cent and 5.4 per cent of the vote respectively.

Edek failed to win any seats in parliament for the first time in the party’s 57-year history, winning just 3.2 per cent of the vote, with the result prompting party leader Nikos Anastasiou to resign.

The Hunters’ Movement also received 3.2 per cent of the vote, outperforming pre-election polling but failing to win a seat, while both Dipa and Volt received just 3.1 per cent of the vote.

Of Dipa and Volt, the former had expected a chastening result, while the latter was taken by surprise, with pre-election polling having indicated that Volt would win enough votes to win a seat.

The night was also disappointing for the Ecologists’ Movement, which failed to win a seat for the first time since 1996, and won just two per cent of the vote.

Andreas Themistocleous’ Democratic National Movement (DEK) won just 0.7 per cent of the vote, while Sikou Pano! (Get Up!) was one place behind, winning 0.5 per cent of the vote.

Further down the list, the Agronomos party and Christos Clerides’ Democratic Change (Demal) party won 0.3 per cent of the vote each, while the Green Party, the Lacedaemonians, and Paphos-based independent candidate Kyriakos Savva took 0.1 per cent of the vote each.

المصدر: Cyprus Mail