GREECE’S CONSERVATIVE New Democracy party has regained the lead in the opinion polls and could be in a position to form a pro-bailout coalition after the June 17th election, a spate of surveys over the weekend showed.
Five separate polls, published in major Sunday newspapers, gave Antonis Samaras’s New Democracy an average advantage of 2.5 points over the Radical Left Coalition (Syriza), which is calling for a new deal for Greece and the scrapping of bailout programmes it says are pushing the country deeper into austerity.
Many commentators interpreted in the findings a shift from the mood of anger that produced the inconclusive May 6th result to a mood of concern, as voters become increasingly worried about the possibility of a Greek exit from the euro zone.
New Democracy’s support ranged from 23.3-25.8 per cent, compared to 20.1-24 per cent for Syriza. Excluding undecided voters, that figure could be as high as 27.7 per cent for the former and 25.6 per cent for the latter.
The socialist Pasok party, which negotiated the country’s two bailout agreements, came third in the polls, which showed a number of smaller parties losing support chiefly to New Democracy or Syriza.
Two of the polls showed that New Democracy and Pasok could form a pro-bailout coalition, with a combined 159-165 MPs in the 300-member parliament, up from the 149 seats they took in the May 6th election.
That news saw shares on Athens stock exchange bounce back from a 22-year low reached on Friday, with the main stock index closing up 6.9 per cent. However, with one poll giving New Democracy a wafer-thin lead of a half a point over its leftist opponent, experts warned the election was still too close to call.
“The polls do show New Democracy with a small lead, but we still have a long way to go,” said veteran political analyst Ilias Nikolakopoulos.
All the polls were conducted before International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde’s comments to Saturday’s Guardian in which she said because of tax evasion she had little sympathy for Greeks struggling under austerity.
Her comments generated a furious political and public reaction. Pasok leader Evangelos Venizelos described them as an “insult to the Greek people”, while the Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras said “the last thing we seek in Greece is her sympathy. Greek workers pay their taxes, which are unbearable.”
