ATHENS Sat May 3, 2014 2:02pm EDT
(Reuters) -
Greece
The
election, which coincides with a key local vote, is seen as a test for Prime
Minister Antonis Samaras' fragile coalition in a country still reeling from the
debt crisis and banking on loans from the European Union and International
Monetary Fund.
Samaras'
New Democracy - which leads the coalition with the Socialist PASOK party - and
its rival, the leftist Syriza party, have been running neck-and-neck in polls
for months, with voters often swinging in favor of one or the other party.
But New
Democracy has seen a boost in ratings since Athens tapped bond markets in April
for the first time in four years and Samaras promised to spend a 527 million
euro ($731 million) windfall from Greece's 2013 budget surplus on poor,
austerity-hit Greeks.
The poll
conducted on April 28-30 by Metron Analysis for Sunday's Ethnos newspaper put
support for New Democracy at 28.4 percent and for Syriza at 27.6 percent,
excluding undecided voters - who otherwise stood at 17 percent.
In a poll
by the same agency in April, Syriza was leading with 1.4 percentage points.
To Potami,
a movement launched in February by a popular TV journalist, ranked third with
10.9 percent. It was followed by the Communist KKE party with 6.6 percent.
The
far-right Golden Dawn, which entered parliament for the first time in 2012
tapping into popular anger with austerity and rising unemployment, was in fifth
place scoring 6 percent.
Syriza has
called the vote a referendum on austerity and the EU/IMF bailout and wants to
push for early parliamentary elections.
About 60
percent of the respondents in the Metron Analysis poll said they did not want
early elections.
An MRB poll
for Star TV, which was broadcast on Friday, also showed New Democracy leading
with 0.8 percentage points. Syriza was ahead with 0.2 percentage points in a
previous MRB poll.
(Reporting
by Renee Maltezou; Editing by Sophie Hares)
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