Greeks head to polls for third time in a year

In fact, she may not bother to vote at all. “We have gotten exhausted of the situation”.

It was his own cash-for-reforms deal with Greece’s worldwide lenders in July, signed days after Greeks overwhelmingly voted “No” to more austerity in a national referendum, that upset supporters.

In last-minute campaigning on Friday, Tsipras tried to win back support from disillusioned voters. He told the cheering crowd he would “break the shackles of the past” and move Greece forward “in dignity”. Tsipras had won January elections on pledges of abolishing such measures, tied to Greece’s first two bailouts. Potami hopes to play kingmaker role as a pro-euro ally for either Syriza or New Democracy.

Smiling broadly as he voted in a schoolroom in a working-class suburb of Athens, Mr Tsipras urged his fellow citizens to usher in a new era and “give a mandate for a strong government with a four-year horizon, which is what the country needs”.

He said that politics was being conducted in a way that alienated people’s real needs.

Syriza has a small lead in the polls.

Both Syriza and New Democracy say publicly they will stick to the overall program, though they differ on specifics.

Commentators say there is also a tight race for third place between the socialist Pasok party and the far-right Golden Dawn. It also participated in the coalition led by New Democracy that ruled from June 2012 to January 2015. REPEAT PERFORMANCE – Syriza with the Independent Greeks. For one thing, voters are getting tired.

With both major parties pledging to implement the bailout agreement, “the election is an opportunity to gain some stability”, Diego Iscaro, an economist at research firm IHS Inc., said by e-mail.

However, neither of the two leaders is expected to get the roughly 38 percent of the vote required to have a majority in Greek parliament. But then the European Union will no longer undertake efforts to keep Greece in the eurozone, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned on September 9. Their country’s membership of the single currency is secure, for the moment at least, and financial markets are even beginning to signal that investors would prefer Tsipras return to Maximos, the official residence of Greece’s prime minister.

All that’s been little consolation to people like Stefanos Tsoutsanis.

“There is a voting body that is below the radar, it is not being traced”, Tsipras told Greece’s ANT 1 television.

If he does cast a ballot, Tsoutsanis said it would be for Tsipras, who he believes has a better chance of improving life for future generations. One polling station in an Athens suburb recorded only 25 voters in the first three hours, broadcaster ERT said. “Something might change for the kids”.

Gregor Gysi, a key politician of the German Die Linke party, and the Spanish Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias, as well as Pierre Laurent, head of the French Communist Party, will join Tsipras on stage during his speech, according to the Syriza election center. “The unrealistic “Syriza period” that began in 2012 is coming to an end, tax evasion is harder since the system was digitised, privatising local airports and road building will boost tourism”.