By Nektaria Stamouli
ATHENS--Greeks headed to the polling booths Sunday for the third
time in less than three years to elect a new government, a vote
that could determine the country's future in the eurozone and
reverberate across Europe.
According to recent public-opinion polls, Greece's radical
leftist Syriza party was poised to win the general elections, but
it wasn't clear whether its share of the vote would be enough to
clinch an outright majority in the legislature.
Syriza has been steadily leading in the opinion polls for the
past year, while its lead has widened further in the days
immediately before Sunday's vote. The polls show the party
garnering between 29.6% and 33.4% of the vote, edging out the
incumbent New Democracy party by five to 10 percentage points.
The outcome could have lasting repercussions for both Greece and
the eurozone. Syriza, which emerged as the main opposition party in
mid-2012 at the depths of the nation's debt crisis, has promised to
tear up the austerity and overhaul program that Athens pledged in
exchange for a EUR240 billion ($269 billion) bailout from
international creditors.
Since that deal, Greece has undertaken a broad sweep of revamps
and cutbacks that have helped fix its public finances and nudged
the economy back to growth following six years of deep recession.
Those cutbacks have come at a cost: Some 25% of Greeks remain
jobless, while a quarter of households live close to the poverty
line.
However, Syriza's promises to roll back many of those overhauls
and its demands for debt relief from Greece's international
creditors have also stoked fears of an open clash with eurozone
partners that could lead to the country's exit from the common
currency and once again rattle financial markets world-wide. In the
past three months, Greece's financial markets have shed roughly a
fifth of their value, while nervous depositors have withdrawn
several billions of euros from the country's banking system.
A Syriza victory would also be closely watched by other
antiausterity parties in Europe--on the left and the right---that
have been gaining ground in the past year.
Under Greece's electoral law, the winning party is awarded 50
bonus seats in the country's 300-member Parliament, a measure aimed
at facilitating the stability of an elected government. But even
with that bonus, Syriza doesn't look as if it will have enough
seats to form a government on its own. Polls show it might fall two
to five seats short and would need to turn to another party to help
govern, putting the third-place finisher in a position to become a
kingmaker.
The favorite to take third is To Potami, a middle-of-the-road
party launched by a prominent television journalist in March that
has rapidly drawn voters disillusioned with Greece's traditional
political parties. It is running neck-and-neck for third place with
the ultranationalist Golden Dawn in the polls, at between 5% and
7%.
To Potami's leader has been coy about whether he would agree to
form a coalition with Syriza, saying he would prefer some kind of
national unity government of the top parties.
Another possible ally for Syriza is Independent Greeks, a
right-wing party that has little in common with the leftists apart
from the antiausterity stance, but it wasn't clear whether the
party would manage to cross the necessary threshold to enter
Parliament.
Write to Nektaria Stamouli at nektaria.stamouli@wsj.com