Center-right New Democracy (ND) posts a slightly smaller lead – 4.8 percentage points – over leftist SYRIZA party in the latest opinion poll results released late this week, this time conducted by the MRB firm and presented on the Thursday prime-time newscast of Open Channel.
Opinion polls are now unveiled on an almost daily basis in the country ahead of a May 21 general election.
Incumbent Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis still fields a lead over main rival Alexis Tsipras, the SYRIZA president and former premier, on the question of who’s better suited as prime minister, while the main concern of poll respondents is rising cost of living in the country.
A majority of respondents also judge that both ND and SYRIZA’s policy statements and programs as negative or probably negative.
In absolute terms, ND is given 29.7 percent of respondents’ preference, compared to 24.9 percent for SYRIZA.
Socialist PASOK remains in third place with 8.3 percent, followed by the Communist Party (KKE) with 5.5 percent, Yanis Varoufakis’ radical left Mera25 (3.2 percent) and the rightwing and Eurosceptic Elliniki Lysi (3 percent).
An ominous development, as with other recent polls, is the emergence of an extreme right-wing party established by jailed prominent Golden Dawn politician Ilias Kasidiaris. The latter is shown as picking up 4 percent of support in the specific poll, meaning that if the result is matched in a general election, then the party will be represented in Parliament.
In extrapolating valid responses of the opinion poll, ND is given 31.3 percent; 26.3 percent for SYRIZA; 8.7 percent for PASOK; 5.8 percent for KKE; 4.2 percent for Kasidiaris’ Ellines (Greeks) party; 3.4 percent for Mera25 and 3.2 percent for Elliniki Lysi (Hellenic Solution).
