Karamanlis and New Democracy scrape a second term

1.35 am – final update

The polls shut over 8 hours ago in Greece, and the counting is now almost complete – the official website, with results in English, is here. Note that the results map shows the current state of play in each seat as the votes are counted, not the final result.

The key number to keep your eyes on is the seat total for New Democracy. With 94% of votes in, they have 153 seats projected in the 300 seat Vouli – if this got down to 150 there would be a hung parliament with the possibility of a second election – Prime Minister and ND leader Karamanlis has said he won’t enter a coalition with the right-wing populist Laos party. When the first seat projections appeared, ND were at 160, so are now down 7 seats. Their current 153 includes the “winner’s bonus” of 40 seats. However, it looks as though ND will just keep their heads above water.

The vast Athens B seat (V’ Athinon) with over 2,500 polling stations will be one of the last to finish counting – there are still 400 polling stations to go in this seat which covers outer Athens. PASOK have had a disappointing result, have conceded defeat, and there is speculation that leader George Papandreou could be under pressure.

Headline numbers:

Counted 94% (9.4 million votes)

Projected Seats: ND 153, Pasok 103, KKE 21, Syriza 13, Laos 10

Vote share: ND 42.2, Pasok 38.2, KKE 8.0, Syriza 4.9, Laos 3.7

Turnout 73.9%

Finally, thanks to everyone for their comments on the previous thread which were very much appreciated. It’s now “and it’s goodnight from him” and I’ll hand you back to Mike as we look ahead to what promises to be an interesting UK conference season for all three parties.

Paul Maggs “Double Carpet”

Guest Editor

Mike Smithson returns in a few hours

Paul Maggs runs The Election Game – click on the logo to email for more information.