Greece’s general elections will run on May 21, 2023, and according to a new opinion poll Greece’s centre-right New Democracy party has a 4.8 percent lead over left-wing SYRIZA.
Pollster MRB, the voting poll website, said 29.7 percent of people chose New Democracy, 24.9 percent SYRIZA, 8.3 percent PASOK-Movement for Change, 5.1 percent Communist KKE, 4.6 percent nationalist Greek Solution and 3.2 percent left-wing MeRA25.
The poll saw the current Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, with 37.4 percent of preferences, compared to 31.1 percent who prefer opposition leader Alexis Tsipras. One in five people (19.4 percent) believed neither candidate is suitable.
Election participation requests doubled:
Fifty parties, party coalitions, and individuals submitted applications to Greece’s Supreme Court for approval to run in the May 21 national elections.
According to Ekathimerini, this is “more than double” the number of applications compared to the 2019 general elections.
Among the submissions is the ‘National Party,’ founded by Ilias Kasidiaris, who is serving a jail sentence for his high-level participation in the neo-Nazi criminal organisation Golden Dawn.
The Supreme Court will announce its final decision on Tuesday, May 2.
Supreme Court excludes Bogdanos party from general election
The Supreme Court has excluded the Patriotic Union party of outgoing MP Konstantinos Bogdanos and Prodromos Emfietzoglou due to issues with its name and logo.
A different party called Patriotic Union-Greek Popular Coalition complained Bogdanos and Emfietzoglou had appropriated its name.
Emfietzoglou and Bogdanos failed to convince authorities the name has not been registered to others and the party’s symbol, the Vergina star, is a national symbol, the use of which is prohibited by law.
Source: Ekathimerini