Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the conservative prime minister of Greece, has won national elections, praising his party’s victory as a “political earthquake.”
His center-right New Democracy party was on track to receive nearly 41% of the vote, five seats shy of a majority.
His adversary on the center-left, Alexis Tsipras, congratulated him, as his Syriza party was predicted to receive a poor 20% vote.
Mr. Mitsotakis stated that the result demonstrated that the Greek people had given his party a mandate to govern for four years.
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“The people wanted the option of a Greece governed by a majority government and New Democracy alone,” he declared in his victory speech.
Earlier in the day, party supporters in Athens applauded when an exit poll revealed the unexpected magnitude of New Democracy’s victory. As election results emerged, it became evident that pre-election polls had grossly underestimated the 20-point gap between the two leading parties.
The party of Mr. Mitsotakis won 146 seats, five short of the 151 needed for a majority. On a map the Greek interior ministry provided, all but one of the electoral districts were colored blue for the New Democracy party.
The prime minister’s comments indicated that he would not seek to share power with another party but instead call for a second election at the end of June, when the winning party will receive additional seats.
President of Greece Katerina Sakellaropoulou will offer him the authority to establish a coalition, which he will likely reject. She will then present it to the next two parties, and if that fails, she will install an interim government until new elections are held.
Alexis Tsipras, the leader of Syriza, characterized his party’s performance as “extremely negative” in light of the outcome. He campaigned against the austerity of international bailouts during his 2015 election campaign but ultimately consented to creditors’ demands.
The center-right has governed Greece for the past four years, and its development last year was close to 6%.
Mr. Mitsotakis’ pitch to the nation was that only he could advance the Greek economy and consolidate recent development. The Greeks appear to have responded positively, exceeding expectations.
Giorgos Adamopoulos, aged 47, voted for New Democracy in Athens, a few hundred meters from the Acropolis.
He told the BBC that Greece deserved a better form of politics, but he supported Mr. Mitsotakis because he was impressed with his four-year record as prime minister.
In Greece’s 300-seat parliament, 41% of the vote would have been sufficient to secure a majority four years ago.
Now it takes more than 45%, as the winning party is no longer entitled to a 50-seat windfall in the first round, increasing the likelihood of a runoff.
Mr. Mitsotakis will be interested in the additional seats to which he would be entitled if he wins the second election. With an absolute majority, he would rule for four years with a cabinet of his choosing.
If he pursued coalition talks, Syriza’s socialist rival Pasok, one of the election’s significant winners with 11.5% of the vote, would be a potential partner.
Inconveniently, Pasok leader Nikos Androulakis was the subject of a wiretapping scandal last year.
It led to the resignations of Mr. Mitsotakis’s nephew, the chief of staff to the prime minister, and the head of Greek intelligence.
Mr. Androulakis believes that the prime minister knew he was among the dozens of individuals targeted by unlawful spyware.
In Greece’s 300-seat parliament, 41% of the vote would have been sufficient to secure a majority four years ago.
Now it takes more than 45%, as the winning party is no longer entitled to a 50-seat windfall in the first round, increasing the likelihood of a runoff.
Mr. Mitsotakis will be interested in the additional seats to which he would be entitled if he wins the second election. With an absolute majority, he would rule for four years with a cabinet of his choosing.
If he pursued coalition talks, Syriza’s socialist rival Pasok, one of the election’s significant winners with 11.5% of the vote, would be a potential partner.
Inconveniently, Pasok leader Nikos Androulakis was the subject of a wiretapping scandal last year.
It led to the resignations of Mr. Mitsotakis’s nephew, the chief of staff to the prime minister, and the head of Greek intelligence.
Mr. Androulakis believes that the prime minister knew he was among the dozens of individuals targeted by unlawful spyware. In addition to Pasok, the communist KKE party increased its vote share.
Former Syriza finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, whose MeRA25 party failed to qualify for parliament, was another victim.
Mr. Mitsotakis is a member of one of Greece’s most influential political dynasties.
In the early 1990s, his father, Konstantinos Mitsotakis served as prime minister; his sister Dora Bakoyannis was foreign minister, and her son Kostas Bakoyannis is the current mayor of Athens.
In the end, the February rail disaster that overshadowed the election campaign did not significantly influence the outcome.
The disaster resulted in the deaths of 57 individuals, many of whom were students. After years of economic crisis and underinvestment, opposition parties emphasized the tragedy as a symptom of a dysfunctional, skeletal state.
Greeks have the right to vote at the age of 17, and an initial analysis of the vote by Greek television indicated that 31.5 percent of 17-to-24-year-old voters supported ND, nearly three points more than Syriza.
Chrysanthi and Vaggelis, both 18 and first-time voters, voted for Syriza because their generation desired “something new, something different.”
