The first Marc poll, conducted following the creation of the two new parties and published by *Proto Thema*, reveals a major shake-up in the opposition camp: New Democracy’s lead over the newly formed ELAS stands at 15.1 points, but Alexis Tsipras’s party is clearly in second place, and PASOK is now battling for third place with Maria Karystianou’s “Hope.”
Kyriakos Mitsotakis is 14.6 points (31%) ahead of Alexis Tsipras (16.4%) in terms of suitability for the premiership. Both are polling higher than their respective parties, in contrast to Nikos Androulakis, who trails even Maria Karistianou with just 5.2%. It is telling that only one in four voters from his own party trusts him for the position.
In the vote projection, the ruling party stands at 30.8%, with ELAS at 15.7%, Hope for Democracy at 10.9%, and PASOK at 10.3%, a drop of 3.2 percentage points compared to the firm’s previous poll. All the “old” parties are showing significant losses.
The New Democracy (ND) share is down by 1.4 points — however, Marc analysts explain that this is a technical issue, as they note that with the emergence of ELAS and “Elpida,” the percentage of those who say they did not vote in the June elections but now intend to do so is growing.
Consequently, the expansion of the electorate is forcing pollsters to reweight their samples, which leads to lower vote estimates, but this will need to be confirmed in subsequent polls.
The (un)certainty of the vote
The poll projects an eight-party Parliament; however, Voice of Reason, which barely makes it into Parliament, stands at 3.7% in the vote estimate, i.e., within the margin of statistical error. Marc also measures voters’ certainty about their choice at the ballot box, a metric that is interesting and yields striking results: the lowest percentage of uncertainty regarding their vote is found among the segment of the electorate that supports New Democracy, as 85.9% are “very or fairly certain,” while 13.9% state "I might change my mind" or "not at all sure" about their choice, followed by ELAS with 18.9% voting uncertainty.
The greatest voting uncertainty is found among citizens who choose Greek Solution (48.3%), Freedom Course (40.7%), PASOK (35.1%), Hope for Democracy (33.6%), and the KKE (25.2%).
The Key to a Majority
Marc conducts an in-depth analysis of the undecided vote, which now accounts for over 11%-12% of the electorate and, for many, is the key to a majority for the ruling party: 4 out of 10 voters in this category (41.8% of this group) voted for New Democracy in June 2023, and since they have not chosen another party so far, it is considered likely that they will return to New Democracy when the electoral choices are presented. New Democracy also benefits from the overall approval rating of the government, which stands at 34.8%, as well as that of the prime minister, which is even higher, at 35.3%.
At the same time, nearly one in five SYRIZA voters remains undecided, which means they could potentially constitute a “reservoir” of two percentage points for Alexis Tsipras’s party. In contrast, only one in ten PASOK voters falls into the undecided category, which objectively reduces the potential for significant gains at the polls to just one percentage point.
It is interesting that one in four undecided voters identifies as centrist, while 7.5% identify as right-wing, 14.1% as center-right, 12.7% on the Center-Left, and 10.7% on the Left, while nearly one in three states they have “no political affiliation.” It should be noted that in terms of voting intention, this group ranks Maria Karystianou’s “Hope” party first with 17.3%, followed by New Democracy with 16.5%, with ELAS and PASOK garnering single-digit percentages.
How abstainers and young people are voting
Marc also measured the voting intentions of those who did not vote in the June 2023 elections, either because they chose to abstain or because they were ineligible to vote due to age.
In this category, the differences between the parties are small, with Maria Karistianou in first place at 14.4%, ELAS in second at 12.3%, New Democracy at 10.9%, the Freedom Course at 10.5%, the Greek Solution at 9%, PASOK at 7.4%, and Voice of Reason at 5.6%.
56.7% of SYRIZA voters in the June 2023 elections—which was the last election with Alexis Tsipras as leader—say they would vote for ELAS, as do 10.8% of KKE voters, 6.8% of PASOK voters, 6.7% of Freedom Course voters, but only 2.7%–2.8% of voters from Greek Solution, New Democracy, Victory, and MERA25.
Tsipras’s party has a 10.1% influx from those who had voted for one of the other parties.
Hope for Democracy is chosen by a diverse group: 25.4% from Victory, 22.6% from “other” parties, 18.8% from the Greek Solution, 15.8% from the Freedom Course, 8.7% from the KKE, 8.2% from SYRIZA, 6.2% from PASOK, and 4.7% from New Democracy.
Source: Proto Thema