He led them to the road, he will lead them to ballot boxes. The rage that gripped after tragic train accident in Tempe and leading the youth to mass mobilizations will turn into participation in the upcoming elections, a natural “exit” from the actions of the previous period.

However, due to the very high level of distrust towards political parties (88.5%), no one knows exactly how Tempi will fix the election result.

The above are some of the findings of the New Generation study after Tempi, conducted by aboutpeople on behalf of Eteron, the Institute for Research and Social Change.

As it turned out, two months after the tragic accident, the memory remains fresh, with anger (43.7%), hopelessness (19.7%), shame (17.4%) and insecurity (14.6%) remain the dominant feelings of young people aged 17-34 until today.

The new generation places the main responsibility for the accident not on the stationmaster, but on current government (59.5%) and in all previous governments (58.3%). He is in third place how the public works (28.8%) and immediately after privatization (22.8%).

Tempe disaster

37.8% participated in collective protest actions (demonstrations, strikes, symbolic actions in memory of the victims, etc.). For 13.6% it was the first demonstration. Among women, this percentage is even higher (16.3%). 64.6% mobilized alone or with friends, and 31.1% as part of an organized bloc of student coordinators, student associations, trade unions or political parties/organizations.

As expected, the Tempe disaster strongly influenced the opinions of young people (72.9%) about the government and ruling parties (72.7%) and about political parties in general (68.1%). Among other things, he also suffered confidence in the state (80.2%), but also the image of privatization (64.2%). But he suffered the most young people’s sense of security for transport (87.6%).

The majority (38.3%) believe that in order to change anything in the image of the railways, they should be renationalized as a whole, and 29.4% believe that additional safety checks are needed.

The vast majority (82.1%) say they will vote in the upcoming parliamentary elections, with the main issues that will affect their vote being accuracy/inflation (43.4%), h economy/development (43%), h honesty/transparency (40.8%) and tragedy in Tempe (18.5%). Regarding their ideological position, 22.2% say that they do not express any ideology, 14.7% – that they are expressed by democratic socialism, 12.4% – by social democracy and 11.3% – by liberalism.

“The feelings that prevailed in the new generation after the tragic accident were anger And shame. The metamorphosis of anger into a moral imperative for active action explains the mass entry into the protest of people without previous organizational affiliation,” commented the research supervisor of the study Lukia Kotronaki, Lecturer and Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science and History, Panteillon University. “(…) Emotions alone are not enough to ensure the duration of collective action in time.”

A study within the framework of the new Eteron project “Youth is a voice on the air” was conducted in sample of 634 men and women aged 17-34 from all over the country in April 2023.

* TO following link you can read the entire study “The New Generation After Tempi” and download it linked pdf.