Polls give all the relatively pro-bailout parties combined support of around 65 to 70 percent of the vote.
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Under its interim leader Vangelis Meimarakis, New Democracy has managed to catch up with Syriza and the two parties are running neck-and-neck in opinion polls.
New Democracy has been keen to highlight perceived credibility issues under Syriza, which swept to power in January on the promise of ridding the country of bailouts, only to agree to new stringent austerity terms six months later.
Its members over the decades, often persecuted by right-wing regimes, included many who fought as partisans during the Nazi occupation of Greece.
The right-wing party was founded in 2012 when its leader, Panos Kammenos, and ten others broke away from New Democracy in protest at the second bailout. Sadly, all of the indications ahead of this weekend’s Greek election suggest that Greece will return a very weak government to parliament irrespective of which party actually wins that election.
“The programme we have agreed is open on many points, it’s up to us to fine-tune it in a way that protects the social majority”, he said. This time around though, the Independent Greeks aren’t expected to win the 3% of the vote required to get into parliament.
European officials welcomed the move when it was announced in August, preferring a snap ballot to having a minority Tsipras government trying to implement unpopular reforms.
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.
But under the draconian conditions of Greece’s third cash-for-reforms rescue package, Athens effectively surrendered control over great swaths of economic and social policymaking to its eurozone lenders.
But Syriza, forced to concede the bailout in August with the threat of a disorderly exit from the euro zone looming, has ruled out any pact with New Democracy, which it regards as part of an old guard partly responsible for Greece’s economic woes.
The polls are tight between New Democracy and Syriza, but neither looks likely to come anywhere near to an overall majority alone. So that leaves the socialist PASOK, or the more centrist Potami (the River).
Burned in July by failure to predict the result of Greece’s anti-austerity referendum, pollsters are treading carefully about predicting the victor of Sunday’s vote.
But the shock arrival of hundreds of thousands of war refugees landing on Greece’s doorstep this year could bolster the far-right group, whose leadership is on trial over the murder of an anti-fascist rapper two years ago.
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“In the referendum, poll estimates were far off the mark”, added Yiorgos Arapoglou of Pulse institute, which sat out that procedure as the political scene was “too fluid”, he told Athens 9.84 radio. The leading three parties each have three days to try to form a coalition, in successive rounds of consultations, if the election produces a hung parliament.
