Main opposition New Democracy (ND) party leads ruling SYRIZA by nearly 10 percentage points, in the latest opinion poll results unveiled over the weekend, with the extrapolated results giving the former an even greater lead if elections were held on Sunday.
The poll, conducted by the Metron Analysis firm, was commissioned and published by the “Nea” daily.
Specifically, center-right ND is preferred by 26 percent of respondents in the poll, to 16.1 percent for the previously anti-bailout and anti-austerity SYRIZA party.
A socialist and social democrat grouping led by formerly dominant PASOK party comes in third, with 6.2 percent, followed by the ultra right-wing Golden Dawn (Chryssi Avgi) party with 5.2 percent; the Communist Party (KKE) with 5 percent and the Union of Centrists, with 4 percent. No other party pooled more than 3 percent, which in a general election is the threshold needed to enter Greece’s parliament.
In extrapolating the results, Metron Analysis predicts ND would have finished with 36.7 percent of the valid vote in a general election, a first-past-the-post figure that puts it over or near the point of forming a government outright. Leftist SYRIZA is given 22 percent in a general election, based on the opinion poll figures.
Only the rightist-populist Independent Greeks party (AN.EL) flirts with Parliament representation when the results are further processed, as it is given 2.9 percent. AN.EL, formed by a controversial former ND cadre, current Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, is the junior coalition partner to SYRIZA – Greece’s version of a “strange bedfellows” political alliance.
Eleven percent of respondents said they would not vote in any coming general election. The undecided / no answer vote reached 10 percent.
“Neither” was the most popular answer (43 percent) on the question of who is best suited to be prime minister, in a comparison between the current premier and the ND leader. Nevertheless, ND president Kyriakos Mitsotakis bested Greek PM Alexis Tsipras by earning 25 percent of respondents’ preferences, to 13 percent for the latter.
The nationwide poll was conducted between Sept. 18 and Sept. 20 on a sample of 1,201 people over the age of 18.
ND has led SYRIZA by double-digit percentage point differences in all mainstream opinion polls over the past several months.
The very issue of opinion polls in the country recently entered the sphere of debate concerning the phenomenon of “fake news”, with ND accusing the government of recently leaking favorable poll results from a hitherto unknown and anonymously listed Internet site.
The matter even found its way into Parliament debate, with ND’s rapporteurs accusing the government of boastfully referring – in the ubiquitous non-paper mode – to opinion poll results of an outfit calling itself “Common View”. Poll results published on the obscure website showed the embattled Tsipras government as significantly bridging the popularity gap between it and the main opposition party.
In a heated exchange, a deputy for ND in Parliament even claimed that the site is linked to an associate of a current Cabinet member.
No names, an address, contact information or other particulars are found on the site’s webpages.
