New opinion poll confirms ruling party dominates

A new opinion poll shows the ruling New Democracy party with a 22.8 percentage point lead over main opposition SYRIZA in voting intentions.

In the poll, conducted by marketing research firm MRB Hellas for TV channel Open, conservative New Democracy is credited with 38 percent of voting intentions, followed by left-wing SYRIZA (15.2%), the socialist PASOK (13.9%), the Communist Party (9.6%), the hard right populist Greek Solution (7.7%), the left-populist Course for Freedom (3.8%), the far right Christian party Niki (3.4%), the leftist MeRa 25 (3.2%) and the extreme right Spartans (2.5%). It takes a 3% share of the vote to ensure representation in Parliament.

Voting intentions are measured, per polling firm YouGov, by excluding those who would not vote, don’t know or refused. The unfiltered responses in this particular survey were: New Democracy 30.1%; SYRIZA 12.0%; PASOK 11.0%; Communists 7.6%; Greek Solution 6.1%; Course for Freedom 3.0%; Niki 2.7%; MeRa 2.5%; Spartans 2.0%; Other 2.2%; Undecided/Refused to Answer: 15/4%; Blank/Spoiled Ballots/Abstention: 5.4%.

This latest poll confirms other recently released surveys; namely, New Democracy dominates, SYRIZA is trending downward and is in a close contest with PASOK for second place and the Communists trend slightly upwards.

Asked about who is the best choice for Prime Minister, respondents chose current Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (38.1%) over opposition leader Stefanos Kasselakis (8.2%), PASOK’s Nikos Androulakis (7.4%), Greek Solution’s Kyriakos Velopoulos (6.4%), Communist Party Secretary Dimitris Koursoumbas (5.1%) and Course of Freedom’s Zoi Konstantopoulou (4.0%).

Among SYRIZA voters alone (137 in this sample), 25.5% sided with the internal party opposition, 18.5% with leader Kasselakis and 46.6% with “none of the above.” This result differs from other recent surveys which showed broad support for Kasselakis among SYRIZA voters.

The main issues of concern for respondents are inflation (52.2%), economic growth (25.4%), health (21.3%) and disposable incomes (16.6%). Also, a clear majority (56.3%) believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, versus 26.2% who say things are getting neither better nor worse and 16.6% who believes the overall situation is improving.

On the recent conflict in the Middle East, 30.9% believe that the Palestinians are in the right, 22.5% that both sides are right, 21.5% that both sides are wrong and 10.1% that Israel is right. More than four out of five (83.5%) are worried about the conflict versus (13.6%) who don’t.