Early exit polls of Greece elections revealed late on Sunday that Syriza, the radical leftists who have pledged to roll back austerity and push to cut the country’s debt burden, was the winner, Alexis Tsipras (photo)’s party getting at 36-39% of the vote, between 10 and 12 points ahead the rival incumbent conservatives of New Democracy.
As The Guardian informs, Syriza, which would collect a 50-seat bonus for finishing first, could end up with 158 MPs, an outright majority. But the party could also fall just short of the 151 it needs to govern alone: the final percentage of the vote a winning party needs for a majority depends on the share taken by the smaller parties that score below the 3% threshold needed to enter parliament.
Tsipras’s fierce anti-austerity, anti-bailout message has found many ehnthusiastics among Greek voters. Since 2009, Greece’s GDP has plummeted by a quarter, its household income by more than a third, and joblessness has trebled, to 26%. Among others, Syriza pledged to renegotiate the international bailout that imposed austerity on Greece.