A referendum on the constitutional form of the state was held in Greece on 8 December 1974.
After the collapse of the military junta that ruled the country since 1967, the longstanding dispute between republicans and monarchists re-emerged. The junta had already held a referendum of dubious integrity the previous year on the same question, producing a vote in favor of a republic, which Georgios Papadopoulos used as a pretext to have himself declared President. However, after the collapse of the military regime and free elections the previous month, the newly elected government of Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis decided to re-run the vote, the junta-era referendum being widely considered both electorally and legally questionable.
Despite Karamanlis’ long career in monarchist politics, the government forbade the former King Constantine II from returning to Greece to campaign, but allowed him to make a televised address to the nation. 69.2% of voters approved of a republic with a 75.6% turnout.
Campaign
The referendum campaign included television debates in which King Constantine himself spoke in favor of restoring the monarchy, and those debating in favour of the republic included Marios Ploritis, Leonidas Kyrkos, Phaedon Vegleris, George Koumandos, Alexandros Panagoulis and Costas Simitis, the last of whom became Prime Minister in 1996.
Most parties did not actively campaign, with the representatives in television debates being prominent private citizens. Despite this, there was a partisan valence to the vote; United Left/KKE, Centre Union, and PASOK voters were mostly republican while those of the National Democratic Union, which had suffered a catastrophic electoral defeat three weeks prior, tended monarchist. New Democracy, the newly-elected governing party, was officially neutral; Karamanlis himself had a long history in the monarchist People's Party and National Radical Union but had clashed with the palace as prime minister in the 1960s; New Democracy continued the lineage of monarchist parties but was conceived as a more moderate force and did have a substantial minority of members from republican backgrounds. Moreover, during his exile in France, Karamanlis had become inspired by the conservative republicanism (an idea up to then politically paradoxical in Greece) of the Gaullists.
Two televised speeches a week were given to each side, with an additional two messages broadcast by the former king; a radio broadcast on 26 November and a television speech on 6 December.
Results
By region
The electorate voted categorically in favour of republic. Crete, long a liberal and republican stronghold, gave more than 90% of its vote for the republic, but in around thirty constituencies, the result for republic was around 60–70%. The highest vote share for the restoration of the monarchy were in the Peloponnese and Thrace, at around 45%. The constituencies with the highest vote shares for the restoration were Laconia at 59.52%, Rhodope at 50.54%, Messenia with 49.24%, Elis at 46.88% and Argos at 46.67%.
Aftermath
With the announcement of the results, Karamanlis said: "A cancer has been removed from the body of the nation today." On 15 December 1974, the incumbent President General Phaedon Gizikis (appointed by Ioannides in November 1973) submitted his resignation, and Karamanlis thanked him with a personal visit and by writing for his services to the country. On 18 December 1974, Michail Stasinopoulos, a state list MP for New Democracy, was elected and sworn in as provisional President of Greece, as the Parliament was to compose a new Constitution.
In February 1988, Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis stated in an interview given in London that although he was a republican, the manner in which the referendum was carried out had been "unfair". The statement attracted wide criticism in Greece and was debated in the media. For the remainder of his life, under the pretense of invoking the narrative style reserved for historical reminiscence, Mitsotakis continued to refer to the deposed monarch deferentially by referring to him as the "King" in multiple interviews.
In April 2007 the newspaper To Vima carried out a survey in which 11.6% of those polled wished for Greece to become a monarchy again.