Greece’s Syriza Leading in EU Elections, Exit Poll Shows

By Marcus Bensasson and Eleni Chrepa May 25, 2014 

 

Greece’s main opposition Syriza party placed first in European Parliament elections ahead of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s New Democracy, an exit poll showed.
Syriza will get between 26 percent and 30 percent of the vote, compared with 23 percent to 27 percent for New Democracy, according to a poll for state-run Nerit TV released after polls closed in Athens today. The nationalist Golden Dawn party came third with 8 percent to 10 percent, while Samaras’s junior coalition partner, Pasok, running as the Elia alliance, took between 7 percent and 9 percent, the exit poll showed.
The European vote, together with Greek local and regional elections, is a test of the ruling coalition’s stability. While Samaras has presided over Greece’s return to capital markets, the effects of the debt crisis and a six-year recession remain visible in a country where more than half of young people are out of work.
To Potami, a new party, and the Communist Party of Greece were tied in fifth place, with each forecast to get between 5 percent and 7 percent, according to the exit poll.
In local elections, the result is too close to call in the Attica metropolitan region, which includes the capital Athens, where Syriza’s candidate is challenging the Pasok incumbent for the governorship in a run-off vote, according to another exit poll for Ant1 TV.