Conservative New Democracy party led by Mitsotakis wins landslide victory in Greek elections

By Ahmet Gencturk

ATHENS (AA) – In Greece’s general elections on Sunday, the conservative New Democracy party led by former Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis won a landslide victory with around 80% of the votes counted so far.

According to the results announced by the Interior Ministry, the New Democracy party won 40.48% of the votes, with SYRIZA gaining 17.85%, down from 20.07% from previous elections held on May 21.

As such, the New Democracy won an outright majority in the parliament to form a single-party government.

The social democratic PASOK party received 12.06%, while the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) could be the fourth largest with 7.57 % of the votes.

Meanwhile, the far-right Spartans party, which was openly backed by imprisoned lawmaker Ilias Kasidiaris of the banned neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, won over 4.72% of the votes and entered the parliament for the first time.

Also, the far-right, populist Greek Solution party and the far-right, religious Niki (Victory) party were others that passed the 3% electoral threshold and entered the parliament, with 4.5% and 3.74%, respectively.

The polls also show that the Sailing for Freedom party founded by former Parliament Speaker Zoe Constantopoulou secured seats in the parliament with 3.14%, while the MeRA25 led by Tsipras’ former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis stayed out of the parliament with 2.41%.

The turnout rate in Sunday's elections was only 51.8%, down from 61.1% in the May 21 elections.