1986 Constantinopolitan general election (Queen of Cities)

The 1986 Constantinopolitan general election was held on March 2, 1986. The election was called because of the split of the Progressive Party, as well as Antoniou's willingness to seek a new mandate in order to push for bolder reforms. The election was decisively won by the incumbent government as the three parties increased their number of seats to 108. On the left, the formerly ruling Socialists won two additional seats despite a significantly lower share of the popular vote, which was in part due to the emergence of the green Ecologist Action. Following the election Costas Antoniou returned as prime minister for a second term.

This election was characterized by the largest amounts of "wasted votes" as 22.4% of all valid votes went to parties that did not make it into Parliament, prompting discussions over the reasonability of the 5% electoral threshold. The adoption of the 1982 Gender Parity Law that required at least 40% of candidates to be female led to a boom in women's representation in the chamber as 56 (28%) of them were elected deputies.

Electoral system
The 200 deputies of Parliament were chosen from a single nationwide electoral district via closed-list proportional representation with a 5% threshold.

Background
Despite the pre-election rhetoric of Liberal leader Costas Antoniou his government did not engage in large-scale reforms in its first term, notably due to the opposition of its centrist coalition partners. Instead, the new government took an incremental approach in reversing the economic policies of the left-wing governments of the early 1980s. These first steps included the privatization of some government-owned banks, the abandonment of construction of social housing and the preparation towards switch of the Constantinopolitan pound to a floating exchange rate.

By late 1985 the government took a more direct approach as it proposed to end the indexation of the minimum wage to inflation as the latter had subsided to 6%. This proposition caused a wave of strikes across the country, paralyzing its industries and communications over the winter of 1985-1986. To curb union activity, the government introduced laws that would curb the power of the trade unions, a proposal that was judged as unconstitutional by its critics. The aggressive stance of the government on these issues caused a split in the Progressive Party into the center-right Progressive Liberal Party and the centrist New Progressive Party.

Government formation
Strengthened by the election results, Costas Antoniou formed a new coalition government with the Citizens' Front and the Reform Parties. Faced with a decline in electoral performances the libertarian Reform Party would soon merge into the Liberal Party, forming the brand new Liberal Reform Party in 1988.