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Cyprus enters the final stage of the campaign for the parliamentary elections on 24 May with a party system that is increasingly unstable. The older model rested on strong partisan identities, dense links between parties and social groups, and a small number of dominant actors. That model has been weakening for at least two decades. The process has been shaped by the cumulative effects of the aftershocks of the rejected 2004 referendum on reunification with the Turkish occupied northern part of the island, the banking crisis of 2013, repeated corruption scandals, and changing media habits, all of which has led to declining trust in institutions and the gradual loosening of party-society ties.
Yiannos Katsourides is Associate Professor of the University of Nicosia, Department of Governance and Politics. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Cyprus and is the author of three books: The History of the Communist Party in Cyprus (I.B. Tauris, 2014), The Radical Left in Government: the cases of SYRIZA and AKEL (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and The Greek Cypriot Nationalist Right in the Era of British Colonialism (Springer, 2017).
The 2021 parliamentary elections made this shift impossible to ignore. The traditional pillars of the system all recorded weaker results than in earlier periods, abstention remained high, and a substantial share of the electorate either stayed away or dispersed its support across parties that didn’t enter parliament. This means that half of the electorate’s vote was left unrepresented. The 2024 European elections showed that some previously detached voters were willing to re-enter politics, but through outsider and digitally mediated channels rather than through the traditional party system. As a result, a young digital creator, Fidias Panayiotou, without any prior engagement and knowledge of politics gained an astonishing 19.36% and won a seat in the EP.
Structural fluidity is the most useful concept for understanding the current conjuncture. Cyprus is not merely experiencing an unstable campaign. Voters move more easily across old ideological and partisan lines, younger cohorts are less attached to inherited loyalties, and political can be won without the organizational machinery once monopolized by the large parties. The result is a more open but also more demanding political environment, one in which more actors are represented in politics at the very moment social trust in political representation has declined.
Polling Trends and Electoral Dynamics
The broad direction of the polling landscape seems relatively clear even if the precise outcome remains open. Right-wing DISY (Democratic Rally) and leftist AKEL (Progressive Party of Working People) appear to be competing closely for first place, but at levels far below the historical strength once associated with the two major poles of the system. The battle for primacy remains symbolically important because first place still matters for future coalition positioning. However, neither of the two major poles appears capable of commanding anything close to the social authority they once held. The far-right ELAM (National Popular Front) seems poised to win third place. That would confirm the normalization of the far right, which seems to be continuing its upward trajectory, contrary to earlier assumptions that it had already reached its historic ceiling.
Another major polling pattern is low mobilization across nearly all parties. Abstention has followed a clear upward trajectory over the past decade, rising from 21.3% in 2011 to 34.28% in 2021. At the same time, a substantial segment of the electorate remains entirely outside the formal political process: in December 2025, approximately 160,000 citizens eligible to vote have not registered in the electoral list. If one combines abstainers from 2021 with the non-registered the figure comes strikingly close to the number of citizens who actually voted in that election. This near parity illustrates the extent to which Cypriot politics is structured around two parallel social realities: one that remains engaged, however loosely, within institutional channels, and another that is either disengaged from formal politics.
On the other hand, voters are more willing to experiment, while new actors are entering with lower organizational costs as digital media reduce the cost of visibility for new actors, and political entrepreneurship has become easier. Presumably, the most unpredictable case to capture is Panayiotou’s Direct Democracy Cyprus (ADK), particularly because this party’s voters are mostly drawn from younger and disengaged cohorts.
Among the smaller parties the picture is far less clear. The newer formations such as ALMA (Citizens for Cyprus; founded only a few months ago by the former Auditor General, Odysseas Michaelides) draw on heterogeneous pools of dissatisfaction rather than stable ideological constituencies, making their support more fluid and prone to abrupt shifts. The polls also point to an existential struggle among several smaller parties with longer histories. Social democratic EDEK, the Greens, Volt Cyprus, and center right Democratiki Parataksi (DIPA) all face high-stakes battles around the parliamentary threshold. Failure to secure representation could trigger a crisis of leadership and throw into question long-term survival. Taken together, these trends point to a system in which little is settled. Weak partisan attachments and late decision-making patterns preclude deterministic readings.
The fracturing of Cyprus’s political landscape into more relevant parties with smaller distances between them makes parliamentary arithmetic much more complex. The combined electoral strength of the two largest parties, leftist AKEL and conservative DISY, fell from approximately 67% of the vote in 2011 to around 50% in the 2021 parliamentary elections. At the same time, political competition has become increasingly crowded and dispersed: the forthcoming elections have surpassed the previous record number of competing parties, with 19 parties contesting the 2026 elections compared to 15 in 2021, while the number of candidates has reached an unprecedented 753 individuals compared to 651 candidates in 2021, which comes out to one candidate for every 755 eligible voters.
Established Parties
The conservative DISY remains one of the two principal forces in the system, but it enters this election under pressure from several directions. While trying to distance itself from independent conservative Nikos Christodoulides’ presidency, their values remain closely aligned on matters such as their commitment to the free market or western orientation, and on many substantive policy questions such as their support for Israel, which limits DISY’s ability to act as a fully coherent opposition force. At the same time, it must defend its own space against ELAM to its right. DISY’s earlier shift toward the political center, particularly on issues such as LGBTQ rights and more conciliatory, pro-solution positions regarding the Cyprus problem created political space that ELAM was able to occupy, especially among more nationalist constituencies.
The smaller centrist parties face a harsher reality. They are confronted with a shared crisis of identity and relevance. The old center is not disappearing entirely, but its old authority as a broker within the party system has clearly diminished.
New Political Actors
ALMA is one of the most significant of the new actors with a broad cross-ideological reach. Its core appeal rests on anti-corruption reformism and the promise of moral and institutional renewal. It draws support from citizens angered less by a specific ideological dispute than by the perception that the state has been captured by opaque networks of party patronage. Its strengths are its leader Odysseas Michaelides and that it speaks to a wide public mood. Its weakness is that such a mood is heterogeneous. If anti-corruption is not translated into a deeper policy structure, long-term cohesion may prove difficult.
Volt Cyprus occupies a different space. It is more openly pro-European, more liberal-progressive in profile, and more favorable to a settlement-oriented approach on the Cyprus problem. Its support is likely to come from younger, educated, urban, and internationally oriented voters. That coherence is a strength, but it may also set electoral limits if the party struggles to move beyond a relatively specific social and political base of strongly pro-solution voters.
Direct Democracy, shaped by social media star Panayiotou and by digitally mediated participation, reflects a more anti-establishment mode of mobilization. It appeals to voters who are weakly attached to the old party spectrum and who are receptive to messages about referenda and the simplification of politics. Its dynamism is evident, particularly among younger and digitally engaged publics, but concerns persist regarding its ideological and political coherence, parliamentary discipline, and its capacity to endure beyond the initial wave of enthusiasm.
Campaign Agenda and Strategies
Campaigning in Cyprus has entered a new phase. Traditional door-to-door and local campaigning remain important, but they now coexist with a communication environment dominated by short-form video, social media presence, podcasts, rapid-response messaging, and personality-centered exposure. Even parties that continue to value political programs and organization, like AKEL, have had to adapt to this faster and more fragmented media and communications dynamic. As the campaign enters its final phase, parties in government and opposition are calibrating their tones differently, with traditional parties leaning more heavily on stability and responsibility, and newer formations stressing change and anti-system appeal in order to attract dissatisfied and previously abstaining voters.
Tensions between personality and programme are growing. Most newer formations rely heavily on a central figure even when they rhetorically reject personality politics. Established parties also increasingly foreground recognizable candidates and symbolic associations with competence or renewal. Some newer actors also try to present participation itself as part of their campaign message, as in the case of Direct Democracy’s emphasis on consultation and digital interaction with citizens.
Dominant themes in the campaign have been material insecurity, institutional distrust, and identity-based tensions. Cost of living pressures remain central. Housing, purchasing power, indebtedness, and the strain on middle and lower-income households shape how voters evaluate every broader political claim. Accordingly, parties are elevating these concerns to the top of their agendas. Corruption remains equally central because it is no longer understood merely as misconduct by individuals. It has become a broader judgment about how the system operates since many scandals seem to involve most political actors, even the judiciary. This is why anti-corruption discourse travels so effectively across ideological lines and why it has become one of the key axes of political competition.
Migration and security issues also remain important, despite reduced saliency compared to past months, especially because ELAM has been able to claim issue ownership in this field. Once the far right succeeds in setting the terms of debate, other parties often react defensively rather than shaping the discussion on democratic and socially grounded terms. This can normalize a harsher and more exclusionary public language.
The international context also weighs on this election, even if it is not always articulated as a self-standing campaign issue. The wars in Gaza and the wider Middle East, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, renewed debates on European defence and NATO, and Turkey’s persistent revisionism in Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean all reinforce a broader sense that social insecurity and geopolitical insecurity are increasingly intertwined. For DISY, this conjuncture strengthens its long-standing emphasis on Cyprus’ Western orientation and closer alignment with the EU and NATO-linked security structures, even though, as an opposition party rather than a governing one, it is less directly exposed than the Christodoulides administration to criticism over Cyprus’ stance on Gaza; still, because it broadly shares the government’s pro-Western strategic outlook, it remains vulnerable to attacks from the left on that front. AKEL reads the same environment differently, stressing international law, a more critical position toward Israel’s war in Gaza, demilitarization, and its enduring skepticism toward NATO, while also condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but insisting on diplomacy over military escalation. Volt approaches these issues through a pro-European and legalist frame, linking Cyprus’ security to a stronger Europe, renewed negotiations on the Cyprus problem, and consistent respect for international law, including in Gaza.
By contrast, the far right ELAM frames the international environment primarily in terms of “national survival”, migration, and confrontation with Turkey. ELAM propounds a securitarian narrative in which Turkey remains the principal existential threat, migration is treated as a matter of civilizational defence, and European support for Ukraine is implicitly invoked as a benchmark for the kind of solidarity Cyprus itself should receive. Actors such as ALMA and Direct Democracy have so far devoted much greater attention to corruption, institutional reform, and anti-system representation than to a fully elaborated external strategy, while social media creator Panayiotou has been criticized for reproducing pro-Russian talking points.
The Cyprus problem remains fundamental, but its role in the 2026 election is diminished. While it continues to define the horizon of statehood and geopolitical orientation, it no longer singularly structures everyday electoral competition. Repeated disappointments have made the electorate more cautious on the issue.
The state of the Left
The condition of the Left in Cyprus is inseparable from the condition of AKEL, since there is no other left party with comparable parliamentary relevance. In fact, there is no other left party at the moment at all, creating a concentrated burden. AKEL has no significant competitor to its left that can absorb discontent or experiment with new forms. Losses therefore fall directly on the main party, and the renewal of the left cannot be outsourced elsewhere.
Historically, AKEL still carries the political weight of its 2008 to 2013 governing period. Parts of society continue to associate that experience with crisis and a failure to produce a sufficiently distinct governing alternative. Structurally, the party operates in a transformed social landscape. The working class is more fragmented and precarious, trade union identities are weaker than before, and younger generations do not enter politics through inherited collective loyalties in the same way.
The party has tried to respond through a broader social message and through initiatives such as the Social Alliance, which aim to formalize ties beyond the traditional left core. The strategic logic is understandable, but the electoral results of this opening remain limited so far. Some former or potential AKEL voters abstain; others move toward Volt on pro-European and settlement-oriented grounds; others are drawn toward ALMA by anti-corruption sentiment rather than ideology.
Even so, AKEL retains real assets. It remains the most organizationally rooted force capable of articulating a serious social agenda around wages, housing, public services, inequality, and labor insecurity. In a fragmented parliament, organization, policy competence, and disciplined parliamentary work may become more important than headline campaign momentum. The strategic task for the Left is not only to defend space, but to rebuild trust in social transformation and credible governing.
Potential Outcomes
The likely outcome of the elections is a more plural but also more difficult-to-govern House of Representatives. Stable blocs and traditional centrist brokerage appear increasingly implausible, making issue-by-issue bargaining and fluid parliamentary alignments likely. Smaller parties and even individual MPs may acquire leverage disproportionate to their size. The challenge after the election will therefore be double: to govern effectively within a more dispersed chamber, and to show that a broader representative field can still generate coherent policy outcomes.
More fundamentally, the analysis presented here suggests the gradual emergence of what might be described as “two party systems in one”. On the demand side, Cypriot society appears increasingly divided between a politically engaged electorate that continues to operate, however critically, within institutional channels, and a large sphere of abstention, intermittent participation, and anti-system sentiment. On the supply side, a parallel divide is emerging between the traditional party system, rooted in older organizational structures and historical loyalties, and a newer ecosystem of digitally mediated, anti-establishment political formations. The interaction between these two worlds is becoming one of the defining characteristics of contemporary Cypriot politics.
The 2026 elections will not resolve these tensions, but they will clarify more sharply the direction in which the Cypriot political system is moving and whether this transition can produce more meaningful democratic representation or merely reproduce instability under new forms.
