Greek election: Conservative party regains control, ousts left-wing PM

[Valin]

Fox News/AP

Elena Becatoros, Derek Gatopoulos

7/7/2019

ATHENS, Greece – Conservative opposition leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis comfortably won Greece's parliamentary elections Sunday, delivering a stinging blow to leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras after a tumultuous four years in office as the country struggled through a crippling financial crisis.

With more than 90% of votes counted, Mitsotakis' New Democracy party had 39.8% of the votes, compared to 31.5% for Tsipras' left-wing Syriza party.

The extreme right-wing Golden Dawn party, founded by neo-Nazi supporters, narrowly failed to make the 3% threshold needed to enter parliament — a huge fall of support for a party that had become the third-largest in the Greek legislature during the country's financial crisis.

The results indicated Greek voters bucked a recent trend in Europe of citizens rejecting the political mainstream and turning to populist and euroskeptic parties.

(Snip)