Greek election map painted blue with ND’s color; sole exception northeast Rhodopi prefecture

Center-right New Democracy (ND) party achieved first-place showings in 53 out of 54 prefectures in Greece on Sunday, with nearly 97 percent of the vote tallied by the end of the evening.
The sole prefecture where ND failed to come in first was in the northeast border prefecture of Rhodopi, where its main rival, leftist SYRIZA party, posted its only win. The results were similar to last month’s election, on May 21, when SYRIZA again was first in voters’ preferences in the prefecture.

Specifically, the leftist party led by former prime minister Alexis Tsipras picked up 33.78 percent of the vote, compared to 28.77 percent for ND and 19.08 percent for socialist PASOK.

The specific prefecture, which hosts a sizable number of residents belonging to the Lausanne Treaty-protected Muslim minority, was the object of a fierce political clash between ND and SYRIZA. The former charged that SYRIZA’s two top candidates, one of which was re-elected on Sunday, had close ties with the Turkish consulate in Komotini, the prefecture capital.

Both candidates had previously also made references to a “Turkish minority” in northeast Greece, rather than the internationally recognized Muslim minority.