Resounding victory for ND

With nearly all votes counted in Greece’s general election, ruling New Democracy was on course for a resounding lead of nearly 21% early Monday morning.

More specifically, ND garnered 40.79%, winning 146 seats in the 300-seat Parliament, ahead of SYRIZA with 20.07% (71 seats), the socialist PASOK with 11.46% (41 seats), communist KKE (7.23%, 26 seats) and nationalist Greek Solution on 4.45% (16 seats). The other parties just failing to gain the 3% threshold to enter Parliament were nationalist party Niki, Sail to Freedom and leftist MeRA25.

According to the Constitution, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will be given an exploratory mandate to seek coalition partners to secure a majority in the 300-seat Parliament. But as ND has stated, it wants to secure one-party rule, so a second election will be held in late June or early July.

Sources from ruling ND, indicated that the second round of voting could be held on June 25 instead of July 2.

With this lead over the main opposition SYRIZA, the biggest margin since the first post-dictatorship elections in 1974, Mitsotakis said in his televized address that “the victory exceeded all expectations.”

“The message is for New Democracy to be a single-party government,” he said, stressing that Greece needs a government that believes in reforms and this cannot happen with a fragile administration.

For his part, a dejected SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras described the result as “extremely negative” for SYRIZA, adding that “our [party] bodies will meet immediately.”

“We must immediately make all the changes needed to fight the next election battle.”

“I called [Kyriakos] Mitsotakis to congratulate him. Battles have both wins and losses. Our collective [party] bodies will convene immediately to assess the results. There will be another battle. We must immediately make all the changes that are needed,” he said, speaking from SYRIZA’s headquarters.

PASOK-KINAL leader Nikos Androulakis hailed his party’s showing in the elections, describing it as a “great victory.”

“Today is a very big night for the democratic party. And I want to thank from the bottom of my heart every Greek woman and man who signed this very great victory today,” he said in his first public statement as his party seemed on course to increase its seats in Parliament.