Greeks are voting for a second time today in little more than a month to elect a new parliament, with voters expected to give former Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s conservative party a second term in office.
Today’s run-off is overshadowed by a boat wreck off the coast of western Greece about a week ago in which hundreds of refugees and migrants either died or went missing.
But the disaster is unlikely to significantly affect the overall outcome as Greeks are expected to focus on domestic economic issues.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis is eyeing a second four-year term as prime minister after his New Democracy party won by a huge margin in May but fell short of gaining enough parliamentary seats to form a government.
With a new electoral law now favouring the winning party with bonus seats, he is hoping to win enough seats to form a strong majority in the 300-member parliament.
The new electoral system grants a bonus of between 25 and 50 seats to the winning party, depending on its performance, which makes it easier for a party to win more than the required 151 seats in the parliament to form a government.
His main rival is Alexis Tsipras, the 48-year-old head of the left-wing Syriza party who served as prime minister from 2015 to 2019, during some of the most turbulent years of Greece’s nearly decade-long financial crisis #Greeceelection2023#Kyriakosmitsotakis#Alextsipras ~PR.153~ED.101~HT.96~
