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Greece’s conservative New Democracy party won a landslide victory in the country’s second election in five weeks Sunday, with partial official results showing it gaining a comfortable parliamentary majority to form a government for a second four-year term.
Official results from nearly 90% of voting centers nationwide showed Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ party with just over 40% of the vote, with his main rival, the left-wing Syriza party, suffering a crushing defeat with just under 18%, even worse than its 20% in the last elections in May.
Sunday’s vote came just over a week after a migrant ship capsized and sank off the western coast of Greece, leaving hundreds of people dead and missing and calling into question the actions of Greek authorities and the country’s strict migration policy. But the disaster, one of the worst in the Mediterranean in recent years, did not affect the election, with domestic economic issues at the forefront of voters’ minds.
Mitsotakis’ party was projected to win around 157 or 158 of Parliament’s 300 seats, thanks to a change in the electoral law that grants the winning party bonus seats. The previous election in May, conducted under a proportional representation system, left him five seats short of a majority despite winning 41% of the vote.
In all, eight parties are projected to surpass the 3% threshold to enter Parliament, including an ultra-religious party and far right party backed by a jailed former lawmaker from the Nazi-inspired and now outlawed Golden Dawn party. The number of parties that make it into Parliament will affect how many seats the winner will hold.
Mitsotakis, 55, campaigned on a platform of securing economic growth and political stability as Greece gradually recovers from a brutal nearly decade-long financial crisis.
