Outgoing leftist premier Alexis Tsipras had made pre-election promises in January to put an end to the austerity measures which have battered Greeks for years.

However Tsipras eventually agreed to a third bailout of €86 billion ($97 billion) with tight reformsplus the continuation of hard measures imposed on the country.

Following Tsipras’s turnaround his Syriza party split with its Left Platform bloc – lead by former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis – later forming an anti-austerity party called Popular Unity.

A loss of support from former colleaguesforced Tsipras to call early elections.

Opinion polls conducted this week have shown a neck-and-neck battle between Syriza and the conservative New Democracy party headed by Evangelos Meimarakis.

Despite the fact that many Greeks are still undecided a Friday poll gave Syriza a lead of 2.5 percentage points over New Democracy in two surveys by GPO and the University of Macedonia on behalf of private broadcasters Mega and SKAI respectively.

According to the GPO survey Syriza could win 28.5 percent New Democracy 26 percent Golden Dawn 6.1 percent PASOK 6 percent the Greek Communist Party 5.7 percent Potami 4.8 percent Popular Unity 3.9 percent ANEL 3 percent and the Union of Centrists 2.8 percent.

The ‘undecided’ vote was 12 percent.

The University of Macedonia poll put Syriza at 31 percent New Democracy at 28.5 percent Golden Dawn at 6.5 percent Potami at 4.5 percent the Communistsat 5 percent ANEL at 2 percent PASOK at 5 percent Popular Unity at 3 percent the Union of Centrists at 3 percent and 'others' on 3 percent.

Another 8.5 percent answered “don’t know did not answer”.

Coalition options

Questions are being asked if assuming Syriza and Tsipras win the biggest vote if they will have enough seats to be able to form a stable coalition government.

If Tsipras decides to form a coalition with New Democracy – which he has ruled out – this could bring back to the surface the extreme-right Golden Dawn party as opposition.

In last-minute campaigning on Friday Tsipras tried to win back support from disillusioned voters.

“On Sunday we have ahead of us one more crucial referendum. The ballot’s dilemma is whether we’ll let Greece go backwards or continue together the great effort we started in January; to restore dignity to the country” he told a crowd gathered at Syntagma Square in Athens.

Voting for the 19 participating parties started at 7 a.m. local time [0500 GMT]; the polls will stay open for 12 hours.

First estimatesare expected at 9.30 p.m. local time.

Greek electoralsystem

Greek electoral law states that 250 of the 300 seats in parliament are allocated according to proportional representation to each party that clears a three percent threshold.

If all partiesparticipating were to clear the threshold then a vote share of about 40% would be needed to gain an outright majority of 151 seats.

The share needed for a majority falls according to how many of the parties participating fail to enter parliament.

The party with the majority of votes automatically wins a 50-seat premium in order to form a stable government.

If the first party does not have enough seats to form a government President Prokopis Pavlopoulos will givethe leader of the first-place party a mandate to form a coalition.
by Magda Panoutsopoulou