Greeks went to the polls on Sunday for the second time in little over a month to elect a new parliament, with voters expected to give former Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ conservatives a second term in office.
Sunday’s election is being held in the shadow of a migrant shipwreck on June 14 in which hundreds of people are feared to have perished off southern Greece. One of the worst such disasters in years, it has shown the parties’ divisions over migration.
Mitsotakis’ New Democracy party won an election on May 21, 20 points clear of the leftist Syriza party that ruled Greece from 2015 to 2019.
But it fell just short of the outright majority needed to rule without forming a coalition, prompting the second vote under different rules that make it easier for the winning party to secure a majority in the 300-seat parliament.
Opinion polls in recent days have shown New Democracy with more than 40% of the vote, with Syriza, headed by Alexis Tsipras, trailing at about 20%.
Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. (0400 GMT) across Greece and will close 12 hours later, with results expected by around 1700 GMT.
The shipwreck disaster sidelined other issues in the run-up to the election, including a cost of living crisis and a deadly rail crash in February that exposed shortcomings in that public transport system.
Reuters
