NEWS

Conservatives happy with nationwide showing despite poor Athens results

New Democracy denied on Sunday that SYRIZA’s stronger-than-expected local election showing in Athens and Attica would impact on next Sunday’s European Parliament elections, even though a new opinion poll gave the leftists a lead of almost 5 percentage points.

Sources at the conservative party told Kathimerini that the party would evaluate last night’s results based on the picture across Greece rather than just in Attica, where the conservatives performed poorly. They added that in the 2012 parliamentary elections, SYRIZA won the most votes in Attica but came second nationally.

The sources also pointed out that former New Democracy MP Nikitas Kaklamanis drew a lot of votes from the conservatives’ choice for Athens mayor, Aris Spiliotopoulos. ND officials further drew attention to the fact that most of the party’s regional candidates would make it into the second round and that SYRIZA would not have any candidates in districts such as Macedonia, Thrace and Epirus.

A Kapa Research poll carried out for To Vima and Reuters indicated that SYRIZA has a considerable lead over New Democracy ahead of next Sunday’s European Parliament elections.

The survey gave the leftists 27.4 percent and New Democracy 22.7 – a lead of 4.7 percentage points for the opposition party. Golden Dawn was third with 8.7 percent, just ahead of To Potami on 8.1 percent. They were followed by the Communist Party (KKE) on 6.4 percent and PASOK’s center-left alliance, the Olive Tree, on 6.2 percent. Bringing up the rear were Independent Greeks on 4 percent and Democratic Left (DIMAR) with 1.4 percent. Of those questioned, 7.3 percent said they would vote for other parties and 7.8 percent said they had not decided who to support.

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