Greece’s governing New Democracy party is expected to have a clear lead in Sunday’s election, despite a recent scandal and being unlikely to take power immediately under new proportional representation laws.
Centre-right New Democracy, led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has been ahead in recent polls by at least five points over its main rival, the radical left Syriza party, while centre-left Pasok has been in third place.
Under electoral laws introduced by the previous Syriza government, a party must get more than 45 per cent of the vote to secure a majority in the 300-seat Greek parliament. This is unlikely to be achieved on Sunday, meaning a coalition government could be on the cards.
According to the Greek constitution, if there is no outright winner on the day of the election, the party with the most votes will get a three-day mandate to form a government via a coalition. If unsuccessful, the parties with the second and third-highest votes are given the same opportunity.
“It will all depend on New Democracy’s results tonight,” said Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of risk analysis company Teneo.
“If Mitsotakis sees that his numbers are low and no government can be formed in the second elections, he will aim to achieve some coalition in the coming days,” he added.
Mitsotakis, whose reputation has suffered after a wiretapping scandal and questions over the handling of a train crash that led to the death of 57 people, has repeatedly stated that he wants to avoid a coalition and would hold out for a majority government.
This could be achieved by using a new electoral law introduced by his government to hold a second election, which grants the party with the most votes in the first election up to 50 bonus seats in the second round.
Greek voters are focused on the high cost of living, with inflation weighing heavily on the population and a large number of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion.
But this will also be the first election in more than a decade taking place without surveillance from European partners. After years of bailouts and austerity measures following the debt crisis, Greece’s economy has made one of the strongest eurozone recoveries from the Covid-19 pandemic and is about to reach investment grade again.
“The macroeconomic progress has been undoubtedly mad in the past four years in terms of growth, reduced unemployment and falling debt-to-GDP ratio,” said Dimitris Papadimitriou, professor of political science at the University of Manchester.
“The flip side is the cost of living . . . Greek average wages remain very low despite the fact that unemployment has come down, leading to the second-worse purchasing power in the EU, only better than Bulgaria,” he added.
Syriza’s leader Aléxis Tsípras is still widely remembered as the politician who nearly forced Greece out of the euro through brinkmanship with EU authorities during his first year in office.
“Syriza has been unable to convince voters that they could provide a better economic formulation than what New Democracy is proposing,” said Piccoli.
“Their messaging was confusing and completely missed the opportunity to use the economic card,” he added.
If a second election does take place, it is expected to be held in late June or early July.
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