ATHENS – The period leading up to the April 16th Easter holiday in Greece was stressful due to mourning and reflection over a deadly train crash that claimed 57 lives. This dominated the feelings and headlines, but now the focus has shifted to campaigning for the May 21st elections.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his New Democracy government face a rematch against the party he defeated in the July 2019 snap elections, the newly rebranded SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance led by former premier Alexis Tsipras.

Surveys have shown that the gap between the two parties has been closing, with the Conservatives’ lead dropping to as little as 2.9% before rising again to around 4%. However, this time there is a new factor – the resurging new PASOK-KINAL Movement for Change, which has taken a stronger third-place showing in the polls.

This puts the center-left party in a position to be a kingmaker and potential coalition partner if neither of the front-runners can win enough votes to form a single-party government outright, which is expected due to a change in electoral laws brought by SYRIZA previously.

SYRIZA eliminated a 50-seat bonus in the 300-member Parliament for the first-place finisher, making it essentially impossible for any party to gain a majority in the first round of voting.

In anticipation of this, Mitsotakis is already discussing a second ballot in early July that will provide a sliding scale of 20-50 bonus seats for the winner, under an amendment passed by his government. He will dissolve Parliament to set up an interim government to rule during the limbo period between elections, and the campaigning that had begun before Easter will now intensify.

The signs suggest that this will be a brutal and personal campaign, with so much at stake. Mitsotakis is promising an economic recovery during the waning COVID-19 pandemic, while Tsipras is still criticizing his rival over a surveillance scandal and failure to implement railway safety measures, which the leftist government failed to do.