Main opposition New Democracy (ND) party continues to field a double-digit lead in the latest opinion circulated this week in the crisis-battered country, although slipping slightly from a previous result.
According to a poll conducted by the University of Macedonia’s political studies department and commissioned by the Athens television station Skai, center-right ND was preferred by 30.5 percent of respondents to ruling SYRIZA’s 16.5 percent.
Even more pronounced was the difference on the question of who respondents believe will win the next elections, whenever they are held, regardless of what their partisan preferences.
Here, ND leads by 59.5 percentage points, 71 percent to 11.5 percent for hard left SYRIZA.
The previous poll by the same research in December 2016 group gave ND 32 percent of respondents’ preference to 16 percent for SYRIZA.
Additionally, based on the opinion poll’s results, only three other parties are given above 3 percent support, the threshold that must be exceeded in a general election (as a percentage of valid votes) to enter Parliament.
Specifically, those parties are the extreme nationalist Golden Dawn (Chryssi Avgi) with 7.5 percent, followed by a socialist PASOK-led grouping with 6.5 percent and, lastly, the Communist Party (KKE) with 6.5 percent.
The portion of respondents termed as “undecided” or declining to answer reached 16 percent of the total of respondents.
Asked who was more capable to be prime minister, ND leader and former minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis polled 33.5 percent to 20.5 percent for current premier Alexis Tsipras; “neither” was the answer given by 44 percent of respondents.
