Thousands of Greeks stayed away from polls or cast a blank ballot in today’s snap elections that were called when the government of Alexis Tsipras resigned last month after a rebellion from within his own Syriza party.
Tsipras’ Syriza party is set to win today’s elections as rival New Democracy leader Evangelos Meimarakis conceded to Tsipras.
Low voter turnout, reflecting disenfranchisement amongst Greeks in their political process, is a big topic on Greek television this evening, as is the increase in parliamentary seats expected to be won by Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.
8:43pm Athens time: Complete results are not yet in as of the writing of this post, but updates will follow throughout the night. However, New Democracy leader Evangelos Meimarakis has conceded to Alexis Tsipras.
1 comment
I would hardly call a 7.5% win a tight race, this was a clear victory for the party and a crash for Meimarakis. The low turnout was indeed a sad occurrence since these past year has been so critical for the country but given that half the Greek population lives in the capital but votes in their hometowns, the reason behind this big absence of voters was way more financial than it was apathy towards the political system. People are aware of the fact that the elections will decide the country’s future and most of them are not conniving or careless about it, instead they cannot afford the costs that traveling to vote would put upon them since this is the third time in the last 8.5 months that elections are being held (including the referendum).