In the run up to one of the most critical elections in decades in Greece it appears that Antonis Samaras is to tack to the right in an effort to shore-up his party’s support.
Opinion polls currently put Samras’s ruling New Democracy party between three and five points behind the opposition party SYRIZA. While few believe that Samaras will be able to reverse this trend and pull out in front, SYRIZA’s lead does appear to have been trimmed in recent weeks. With a slim majority, Alexis Tsipras’s party may struggle to cobble together a workable coalition, possibly even leading to a new round of elections.
Antonis Samaras’s strategy over the next weeks is now becoming increasingly clear. On one hand he and his deputies will likely seek to raise the threat of uncertainty and even a potential Grexit in the event that SYRIZA takes power and threatens to upend Greece’s negotiations with its lenders. Painting SYRIZA as a risky choice, Samaras will seek to trim the opposition’s support.
At the same time Antonis Samaras is looking to pivot to the right and boost his support from the pool of voters that are to the right of the center-right New Democracy.
Specifically, New Democracy officials are eyeing the 16.5% of voters (about 1,000,000 people) to the right of New Democracy as indicated by the results of the European elections. A significant percentage of these individuals voted for the neo-fascist party Golden Dawn, while others supported the anti-bailout party Independent Greeks and other smaller parties.
Currently, the Independent Greeks are fighting for survival and may not even pass the 3% threshold required to make it into parliament. Similarly, with the leadership of Golden Dawn imprisoned pending trial on charges of operating a criminal organization, the neo-fascist party is polling at about 5-6%, down from the 9.4% the party received in May’s European elections.
Another small, hard right party, LAOS, is effectively out of the running, having failed to enter parliament in 2012. Its leader, George Karatzaferis, has also been tainted by bribery allegations in recent months.
The Prime Minister is looking to garner support from these smaller hard-right factions – critically by attracting deputies from the smaller right wing parties (aside from Golden Dawn). In this way, New Democracy hopes to appeal to voters on the right – particularly the almost 10% that voted for Golden Dawn in the European elections.
Effectively the party sees the center of the spectrum as increasing crowded, with PASOK, The River and George Papandreou’s newly formed party all seeking to win over centrist voters. New Democracy will seek to counter this by uniting the right-wing.
Already behind the scenes discussions have been taking place with deputies of the Independent Greeks (ANEL) party to be absorbed by New Democracy. Independent MPs who had departed from ANEL and voted in favour of the government’s presidential candidate have already been included in New Democracy’s electoral lists.
What remains to be seen however is how Takis Baltakos – the former government general secretary – will move in the coming days. It is expected that he will make a decision over the weekend as to whether he will seek election with the newly formed hard right party ‘Roots’ (Rizes).
It should also be noted that it is far from clear whether Antonis Samaras’s tack to the right will pay off electorally. It should be noted that both Independent Greeks and Golden Dawn were vehemently opposed to the memorandum bailout program implemented by Samaras’s government over the past two years. Indeed that was a driving force behind the electoral success of both parties in the past. Similarly LAOS's participation in a unity government supporting the memorandum in 2012 proved to be the party's electoral downfall.
As such it is unclear whether any amount of hard right rhetoric from New Democracy will convince former anti-bailout voters to support the party that has become intimately linked to Greece’s memorandum.
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