Greek legislative election, 1956

The Greek legislative election of the 19 February 1956 resulted in victory for Constantine Karamanlis and his National Radical Union party. It was the first general election in Greece in which women had the right to vote [Women first voted in a repeat vote for the 1952 election held in 1953 in the Thessaloniki Prefecture. The first woman MP was elected in that same election.] .

In 1955, Karamanlis was chosen by the King Paul I as successor of prime minister General Alexandros Papagos, who had just died. The decision was controversial, as Karamanlis was not a leading member of Papagos' party, and caused the vehement reactions of the party's two most prominent members, Stefanos Stefanopoulos and Panagiotis Kanellopoulos.

Nevertheless, Karamanlis, thanks to the support of the royal family and his own dextrous handlings, managed to establish himself as a strong leader. After stabilizing his leadership, he dissolved the Greek Rally party and created his own conservative right-wing party, the National Radical Union, which also comprised some prominent centrists (Evangelos Averoff, Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, Konstantinos Tsatsos) and went on to dominate the Greek political scene for the next 8 years.

The National Radical Union won thanks to a complex and controversial electoral system. In the rural constituencies the National Radical Union was expected to gain a plurality, while in the urban constituencies, the Liberal Democratic Union (Greece)|Liberal Democratic Union coalition party was expected to lead [ [http://www.eleftheria.gr/index.php?MDL=pages&page=article&SiteID=MTg5Ng=&all=1 Eleftheria Newspaper, 22 May 2007, article on the history of election laws (in Greek)] ] [ [http://tovima.dolnet.gr/print_article.php?e=B&f=13110&m=A01&aa=1 "Το Βήμα" newspaper, 12 Nov 2000, "Δημοκρατία Διάτρητη" (In Greek)] ] . As a result, the Liberal Democratic Union (Greece)|Liberal Democratic Union coalition party lost the election.

The Liberal Democratic Union included, among others:
* Centrists led by Georgios Papandreou,
* The Liberal Party, led by Sophoklis Venizelos and
* The left-wing EDA, led by Ioannis Passalidis.

A few years later, Georgios Papandreou and Sophoklis Venizelos renounced their alliance with EDA, thus breaking up the Liberal Democratic Union .

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