(BBC News) Greek conservative leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis is on course to win a second term as prime minister and a majority in parliament, initial results suggest.
He beat centre-left rival Syriza in May, but called new elections in a bid to win enough seats to govern alone.
His New Democracy party has won 40.4% of the vote, 20 points ahead of Syriza, with more than half the vote counted.
The vote came 11 days after a migrant boat tragedy off Greece in which 500 people are thought to have died.
Although three days of mourning were held, the disaster had little effect on the campaign and Greeks voted to maintain economic stability.
Former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza party was unable to narrow the margin of last month’s defeat.
But there was success for the newly created far-right Spartans party, which looked set to pass the 3% vote-share threshold to enter parliament.
The Spartans only emerged as a political force this month when the Greek Supreme Court banned another far-right party, the Greeks, and its jailed founder threw his weight behind them.
Greek commentators spoke of a “thriller” involving a number of smaller parties trying to get over the threshold.
But the main story of the election was what looked like an increased margin of victory for Kyriakos Mitsotakis, 55, whose conservatives had already beaten Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza by 20 points in the first election.
He is credited with successfully returning the Greek economy to stability and growth after a severe debt crisis and three international bailouts.
Although many Greeks are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis, voters chose to stick with the party promising lower taxes and improved public health.
While New Democracy was heading for a big win, the left-wing vote was fragmented, with the Socialist PASOK set for more than 11% and the Communist KKE on around 7%.
The conservative leader has formed a reputation as a Teflon-coated leader, fending off a series of damaging crises in the past year, including a rail disaster and a wire-tapping scandal that brought down the intelligence chief and his own nephew, who worked as the prime minister’s chief of staff.
Greece was being led by a caretaker government when a migrant boat sank off the southwest coast in the early hours of June 14.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65997486
