Greeks voting in most critical and uncertain election in decades

PanARMENIAN.Net - Greeks began voting at precisely 7 am local time (0400 GMT, 12 am EDT) in their most critical and uncertain election in decades, with voters set to punish the two main parties that are being held responsible for the country's dire economic straits, the Associated Press reports.

Thirty-two parties vie for the votes of nearly 10 million registered voters, many of whom, according to recent polls, were undecided on the eve of the election. Abstention, once projected to reach historic highs but seen rising in recent opinion surveys, will be crucial to the final outcome. In the last national election, in October 2009, just over 70 percent of the registered voters went to the polls.

The last opinion polls published before a two-week blackout ahead of the election showed PASOK and New Democracy hemorrhaging support since the last election in 2009. Their support has reached historic lows, plunging to percentages last seen in the mid-1970s for the socialists and to historic lows for New Democracy, whose previous low of 33.47 percent was reached in the crushing defeat of 2009.

New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras is expected to come in first, benefiting from a bonus 50 seats in the 300-member parliament. But even with that he would fall far short of the 151 seats needed to form a government. Opinion polls projected him winning not more than 25.5 percent.

PASOK, which stormed to victory in the last parliamentary election in 2009 with 43.92 percent and George Papandreou at its helm, has seen its support collapse over the past two years. Now headed by former finance minister Evangelos Venizelos, it is fighting off a challenge by anti-bailout left-wing parties, with opinion polls projecting PASOK to win between 14.5 and 19 percent. If that happens, it would be the lowest since November 1974, when the party won 13.5 percent just two months after being founded.

Venizelos warned that Greece faces default and mass poverty if voters back anti-bailout parties.