Main opposition New Democracy (ND) continues to field a double-digit lead over ruling SYRIZA party in the latest opinion poll, whose results were announced on Thursday.
Center-right ND has a 16-percentage point lead over SYRIZA, according to the University of Macedonia political science department poll, commissioned and aired by the Athens broadcaster Skai during its prime-time newscast.
Respondents favored ND by 32 percent; 16 percent for SYRIZA.
Support given to other parties mostly mirrored past poll performances: ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn, 8 percent; the Communist Party, 6 percent; a grouping led by social PASOK, 5.5 percent and the Union of Centrists, 3 percent.
All of those parties are currently in Parliament, and must again garner more than 3-percent of the valid votes cast in any future general election to again return to the legislature.
The only out-of-Parliament party appearing with support of more than 3-percent is an anti-bailout formation founded by the former Parliament president, Zoe Konstantopoulou.
Conversely, the centrist Potami party garnered only 1.5 percent of respondents’ preference.
Moreover, the rightist-populist junior partner in the current coalition government, AN.EL, is given 2 percent.
ND president Kyriakos Mitsotakis is judged as the most suitable for prime minister by 36 percent of respondents, with current PM Alexis Tsipras given 19.5 percent; “neither” was the response by 41 percent of respondents.
The most ominous finding in the opinion poll results for the distinctly leftist SYRIZA government is the fact that 70.5 of respondents – irrespective of their political preferences – believe ND will win the next election when it is called, as opposed to 12 percent of respondents pointing to a SYRIZA win.
