Ruling New Democracy party continues to field a double-digit percentage point lead over main opposition SYRIZA party, with the latest opinion poll unveiled on Thursday evening, even as a “second wave” of the coronavirus pandemic caused a general lockdown in the country until Nov. 30 and with the economy for the year imploding.
Specifically, conservative ND is preferred by 37 percent of respondents in a poll by the ALCO firm, which was commissioned and broadcast by the Athens-based Open television station. Leftist SYRIZA picked up 21.5 percent of respondents’ preferences.
Surprisingly, given Greece’s bitterly partisan political landscape, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis also picked up a 48-percent approval mark by respondents, when the latter were asked who they trust more to be prime minister.
The answer “no one” came in second, at 26 percent, while SYRIZA leader and former premier Alexis Tsipras was third, 23 percent or respondents’ preferences.
Views regarding the near future were equally divided, with 47 percent of respondents declaring they were pessimistic over the country’s prospects in the sixth-month post-Covid-19 period; 45 percent answered that they were positive.
Asked to rate the country’s biggest problems, 49 percent picked unemployment.
Queried over the Mitsotakis government’s handling of the pandemic and its repercussions, on a scale of one to 10, the medium from respondents’ answers stood at six.
