Many undecided ahead of Euro election
Turnout uncertainty makes result difficult to predict despite large New Democracy lead
More than one 10th of the Greek electorate remains undecided in the final stretch to Sunday’s elections for the European Parliament, according to an opinion survey.
The finding, as well as questions about how many will turn out for an election that will have no immediate impact on domestic politics, injects a further dose of uncertainty in an election that, according to all polls so far, will be easily won by the ruling conservative New Democracy party.
In the latest survey by research firm Pulse, published on Friday, 10.7% of respondents said they had not decided yet how to vote.
Assured of victory, New Democracy officials still want to, at a minimum, match their result in the previous European election of May 2019 (33.12 percent) and fear that a significantly lower vote share might be an opening crack in the party’s political dominance.
In the Pulse poll, after accounting for the undecided, New Democracy is credited with 29.1-34.9% of the votes (95% confidence interval), main opposition SYRIZA with 14.2-18.8%, socialist PASOK with 11-15% and hard-right, populist Greek Solution with 6.9-10.1%.
Another disturbing finding for ND is that about 14% of those who voted conservative in last year’s two national elections intend to use their vote to “send a message” to the government and that message will definitely not be one of approval. ND officials hope that the dominant trend of the late undecideds to either vote for smaller parties or abstain will continue. But this could also mean the strengthening of the far right.
New Democracy and SYRIZA continued to clash Tuesday over SYRIZA leader Stefanos Kasselakis’ wealth.
The main opposition leader projected an Excel sheet during a Monday night campaign speech listing his income, and that of his husband Tyler McBeth, from all sources as $2.067 million as of December 31, 2023. (The amount is in dollars because both were residents of Miami for a large part of 2023.) Kasselakis claimed that the wealth sources platform pothen.gr is closed and challenged Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to open it and submit his own declaration at the same time.
Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis replied Tuesday that the platform is open and that Kasselakis should have submitted a preliminary wealth declaration within 90 days of becoming SYRIZA leader on September 24, 2023.
