Greece's opposition fragments as New Democracy holds poll lead despite scandals

Greece is living through a paradox that would be familiar to any student of southern European politics: a government mired in scandal, presiding over a judiciary that three quarters of the public believe is covering up a deadly rail disaster, yet facing no credible challenger at the ballot box. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis's New Democracy party sits at roughly 29 percent in voting intention, down from 30 percent a month ago but still far ahead of a fractured opposition that splits the remaining vote among eleven parties.

A catalogue of scandals that should have been fatal

The list of affairs dogging the administration reads like a charge sheet. In February 2023 two trains were allowed to run on the same line for twelve minutes before colliding at Tempi, killing 57 people in the deadliest rail accident in Greek history. The government's handling of the aftermath, delayed investigations, missing evidence, judicial decisions that cleared officials, fuelled a belief, held by 74 percent of respondents in recent polling, that the state is actively concealing responsibility. A year earlier the Predator spyware scandal broke: the malware was found on the phones of opposition leaders, ministers, military chiefs, journalists and businesspeople. Judicial authorities subsequently cleared all state officials, while journalists pursuing the case have themselves been prosecuted. European prosecutors investigating a massive agricultural fraud have reported "attacks" and "discrimination" against their staff. And opposition parties have demanded an inquiry into a politically connected communications company they allege runs shadow financing and online propaganda for New Democracy.

Any one of these episodes might have toppled a government in a less polarised system. Instead, Mitsotakis has ridden them out. The February 2025 protests marking the Tempi anniversary drew hundreds of thousands onto the streets, larger turnouts than during the debt crisis a decade ago, yet Despoina Koutsoumpa, an archaeologist and unionist who helped organise the demonstrations, said the mobilisation succeeded precisely because it was not party-political. "People spontaneously responded to a call from the victims' relatives in just two days. They would not have responded in the same way to political parties," she said.

Why the opposition cannot capitalise

The answer lies in a fragmentation that spans the ideological spectrum. On the centre-left, Pasok has recently overtaken Syriza for second place, but both are bleeding support to newer formations. Syriza defectors alone have created six separate parties since the left-wing coalition lost power in 2023. Calls for a French-style Popular Front alliance between the left and centre-left have gone nowhere. "What unites the left and centre left is a front against New Democracy, but this alone is not capable of offering an alternative governance solution," said Petros Ioannidis, a political analyst at the polling firm Aboutpeople.

Costas Eleftheriou, assistant professor at the Democritus University of Thrace and coordinator at the ENA Institute for Alternative Policies, described a system in transition: "The dominant party is destabilized while the opposition from the right or the left is completely fragmented. Political representatives are seen as part of the problem, and as long as this is the case, a large part of society doesn't know what to vote for."

The far right's fragmented rise

To the right of New Democracy, the picture is no clearer. In the 2024 European Parliament election, one in five Greeks voted for a far-right party, a share that polls suggest has held. Yet the space remains divided between Greek Solution and the populist Course of Freedom, led by Zoe Konstantopoulou, a former Syriza parliament speaker who has reinvented herself as the leading political voice for the Tempi victims' families. Her party, which barely cleared the parliamentary threshold in 2023, now presents itself as the primary vehicle for accountability on the rail crash. Angelos Seriatos, head of research at Prorata, said Konstantopoulou acts as "a magnet for disillusioned and unconventional voters."

But the far-right parties are, in Ioannidis's phrase, "new and fragile, staffed by people with prickly personalities, and have weak leadership." Their appeal rests on "critical language" rather than "specific proposals for governance." Seriatos added that economic anxiety and a favourable international mood following Donald Trump's re-election in the United States are tailwinds for the nationalist right, but those winds have not yet coalesced into a single electoral force.

Mitsotakis's internal balancing act

For all his polling lead, Mitsotakis governs on fragile foundations. New Democracy needs roughly 38 percent of the vote to secure a parliamentary majority under the current electoral law, nine points above its current standing. Aware of the vulnerability, the government recently announced a package of financial support measures that delivered a temporary poll bounce. But the prime minister's room for manoeuvre is shrinking. He has removed his predecessor Antonis Samaras from the party after Samaras criticised its centrist drift, yet internal opposition is forcing Mitsotakis to tilt rightward. The appointment of former far-right activist Makis Voridis as migration minister brought immediate policy hardening. The election of parliamentary speaker Konstantinos Tassoulas to the presidency broke a decades-old tradition of nominating a consensus figure from the opposition.

Lists of potential successors circulate constantly in the Athenian press. Defence Minister Nikos Dendias is widely seen as the most formidable internal rival, but Mitsotakis reportedly prefers Deputy Prime Minister Kostis Hatzidakis. Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis and Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis, himself a former member of the ultra-nationalist Laos party, are also mentioned. Mitsotakis has repeatedly said he will seek a third term, but Eleftheriou argued he "can no longer achieve what he managed to do up to 2023, balance between right-wing conservative and centre-right liberal approaches." Issues that could once be "swept under the carpet", inflation, public infrastructure, trust in the judiciary, are now surfacing, creating a sense "that the state is absent and cannot provide services to its citizens."

The left's missed opportunity

On the other side of the aisle, the failure to build a unified alternative is striking. Syriza, which governed from 2015 to 2019 under Alexis Tsipras, has splintered. Tsipras stepped down as leader in 2023 but has increased public appearances in recent months. Officials in his office insist he will not return before the next election, and many analysts believe his baggage, the bailout memoranda, the Prespa agreement with North Macedonia, the 2019 election defeat, makes a comeback unlikely to unite the fragmented left. Without a figure capable of bridging the gap between Pasok's social democracy and the radical left's activist base, the non-conservative space remains a collection of grievances rather than a government-in-waiting.

A system waiting for a catalyst

The next general election is not constitutionally required until 2027, though early elections are always possible in Greece's volatile parliamentary arithmetic. That gives the opposition time to reorganise, or to fragment further. Seriatos framed the challenge bluntly: "The question is whether the non-conservative political space in general can … convince people that things can be done differently and more fairly. And stop pointing fingers at people for making bad choices." For now, Greek voters have made their choice clear: they distrust the government, they distrust the opposition, and they distrust the institutions meant to hold power to account. The only thing they have not done is translate that distrust into a vote for change.