Friday, June 23, is the last day political parties rally for entrance and/or a high number of seats in the Greek Parliament ahead of the election on Sunday.
Opinion polls show former Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ conservative New Democracy party winning by a wide margin of more than 20% over the main opposition left-wing SYRIZA.
Mitsotakis has ‘warned’ voters that if his party won’t manage to the absolute majority on June 25, then he will press for new elections in August.
May election
New Democracy won May 21 vote with a 20-point lead over Syriza, a margin Greece has not seen since the 1970s. But it fell short of the majority needed to rule alone due to a proportional voting system in place for that poll.
Mitsotakis did not seek coalition allies, saying Greece needs a strong and stable government to push on with necessary reforms.
The other parties decided against forging their own coalition, leading the country to a repeat election.
Mitsotakis then stepped aside for the country to be run by a caretaker government, as required by the constitution.
Opinion polls
Opinion polls conducted since then show New Democracy (ND) widening its lead further ahead of Sunday’s vote.
A poll conducted by RASS polling agency published on June 19 put ND at 42.9% versus 17.9% for Syriza, and showed it winning a comfortable 166-seat majority in the 300-seat parliament.
The Socialist PASOK party ranked third with 12.3%.
Opinion polls suggest that up to seven parties could enter parliament, including the leftist Plefsi Eleftherias, founded by former Syriza lawmaker Zoe Konstantopoulou, as well as newly set up parties like religious NIKH and a far-right party called Spartans, supported by Golden Dawn convict Ilias Kassidiaris.
The system
The repeat election will be held under a semi-proportional representation, or reinforced proportionality, with a sliding scale seat bonus.
Parties need to secure at least 3% of the vote to enter parliament for a four-year term.
Under the new system, the winning party is awarded a bonus of 20 to 50 seats. It receives 20 seats outright if it gets at least 25% of the vote, and can get up to 50 seats if it gets about 40% of the vote.
Voters will not need to put a cross next of the name of their favorite candidate as this time ballots are with lists set up by party leaders.
Over 9.9 million Greeks aged over 17 are eligible to vote.
With Reuters
