Greece’s ruling New Democracy Conservatives have taken a razor-thin lead from the major opposition Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) party as the two continue to trade places heading opinion polls.
A survey by Metron Analysis for Sunday’s Eleftherotypia newspaper put support for New Democracy at 18.7 percent, giving it a 0.6 percentage-point lead over SYRIZA. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s New Democracy party, which won elections in June with 29.6 percent of the vote, has been trying to fend off SYRIZA’s anti-austerity challenges.
In a previous Metron Analysis poll in March, New Democracy trailed SYRIZA by 0.3 percentage points, although given the margin of error they are effectively tied and indistinguishable.
New Democracy was behind SYRIZA for months following the June 17, 2012 vote but managed to grab a poll lead in January after securing international bailout funds to avert bankruptcy and allay doubts over Greece’s future in the euro.
Samaras has since been trying to show the Troika of Greece’s international lenders – the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) that he will meet reform targets even at the costs of implementing more unpopular pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions.
The Troika finished its review of the country’s bailout plan earlier this month and said it was satisfactory, paving the way for disbursement of at least 2.8 billion euros ($3.5 billion) in aid from a delayed installment, with more set to come.
Their next inspection is expected to take place in June and by then Greece must have carried out its first big privatizations and set out how it will cover a budget shortfall of as much as four billion euros ($5.22 billion) for the year 2015 and 2016.
The poll, which was carried out April 16-17, also showed that 68 percent of Greeks think the current situation in Greece is worse than a year ago. Greeks have lost more than a third of their disposable incomes since the debt crisis started more than three years ago, mainly due to repeated waves of austerity and tax hikes in turn for foreign aid.
Samaras has vowed he will not implement any more austerity measures and is banking on reforms and luring foreign investors to halt the country’s slide and begin recovery by 2014, although many analysts believe it will take longer.
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