By Dora Antoniou

The last three days of the festive break completes the respite of the political leadership, which returns to normal conditions from the day after Epiphany. For the government and N.D. the main goal is within the first months of the new year to manage to develop momentum, which will overturn the image of stagnation, which has been “established” in the ruling party’s opinion polls. More than 1.5 years have passed since the 2023 elections and effectively the countdown to the next election has begun, even if the four-year exhaustion scenario, which the Prime Minister insists on, is confirmed, Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

For the N.D. it is critical that he succeeds in dislodging her percentage from his area 30% and raise it, even a little, because a prolonged stagnation threatens to send the message to the electorate that the ruling party cannot escape this rate, it has no momentum. At the same time, if the ruling party is trapped in percentages of this order, then the goal of self-reliance in the next election will be removed increasingly.

On the contrary, an increase in the rate will give the signal that the govt manages to overcome successfully whatever crises caused some of her voters to turn their backs on her and, taking advantage of this momentum, to seek even greater reinforcement.

Achieving the goal of increasing the percentages of the ruling party is undoubtedly linked to the performance of the other parties. In Piraeus they consider that the PASOK appears to be reaching the limits of its rate increase and that it does not have the potential to rise to rates above 20%. The very large gathering recorded by the official opposition party in the polls means, for many, that the “reservoirs” of pumping voters are running out. If this estimate is confirmed, then the significant difference between the first and second party will remain, facilitating the N.D. and its leadership to put on the table the stake of stability, which can be threatened by misgovernance, as there will be no alternative pole of power in the foreground. The question is whether the argument of stability can prove to be enough to sway wavering voters to the N.D. side.

Certainly, this goal was easier when the main opponent was SYRIZAas the experience from his period of government largely contributed to the great strengthening of the ND. It is no coincidence that PASOK is referred to as “green SYRIZA”, which betrays the desire to present the current official opposition party with characteristics similar to those of SYRIZA. It is, however, a clearly more difficult undertaking, as PASOK has been for a number of years the one of the two main poles of the political system and for a significant portion of the electorate, it is a party of power.

Pressure on the ruling party is also exerted by the right, by the parties that claim it traditional conservative electorate projecting a more conservative agenda, which the ruling party cannot fully serve if it is to continue to have a strong presence in the Center space. Therefore, the other big bet for N.D. it is to manage to shield the space to her right and to limit the dynamics of the parties gathered there and which cumulatively gather a percentage, which in some polls even reaches 20%.