Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras votes during a parliamentary session in Athens, Greece July 23, 2015. Greece's leftist government tried on Wednesday to contain a rebellion in Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' Syriza party ahead of a vote in the evening on reforms required to start talks on a rescue deal. Reuters/Yiannis Kourtoglou

Opinion polls on Sunday indicated very close competition between the rival Greek political parties, adding an element of suspense to the snap elections on Sep. 20. Survey showed the victory of radical leftist Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras over New Democracy conservatives by a very thin line of difference in votes.

Greek Prime Minister Tsipras announced his resignation on Aug. 20, seeking permission to call for stricter reforms under a novel 86 billion euro (AU$97 billion) international bailout. The decision taken by Tsipras has led to the fourth election in less than three and a half years. The Greek elections were scheduled in February 2019, but the resignation from Tsipras has called for sudden snap elections prompting total of 300 seats in the Hellenic Parliament at stake.

A poll conducted by the Public Issue for Greek newspaper Avghi depicted that 40 percent people in Greece believed that Tsipras is the best person to lead the country, whereas only 37 percent of Greeks thought New Democracy’s Evangelos Meimarakis have the ability to represent Greece. Last week’s opinion survey conducted by an MRB poll for the Real News newspaper depicted Syriza’s victory with 25.9 percent of the vote against New Democracy’s 25.5 percent votes.

Neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn emerged as the third largest party with support ranging from 6.4 percent to seven. The party aims at investing capitals on burgeoning refugee crisis of Europe. Both Syriza and New Democracy parties are expected to win by complete majority, also giving an opportunity to small parties like To Potami, the Pasok socialists and the nationalist Independent Greeks to come into focus.

“So far, there’s no favourite for the election,” General Manager of Greek pollster Pulse RC, George Arapoglou, said, as quoted by Triblive . There was no opinion poll that depicted over 36 percent votes gathered by either of the two largest parties.

From October, Greece may adopt series of reforms related to multi-billion EU bailout as approved by the parliament in August, of which the most important is the tax regime for farmers.

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