A telephone call between presidential candidate Stavros Dimas and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras took place late last night to discuss Wednesday’s first round of presidential elections.

Both Mr. Samaras and Mr. Dimas agree that there will be a progressive improvement to the results of the voting and expect to gather the 180 votes required for his term to go ahead. Both have reason to believe that deputies that will vote “no” in the first and second rounds will buckle and change their vote to a “yes” in the third round.

They did the calculations of the number of deputies who would be willing to see Greek parliament dissolve and risk the economic turmoil that this would cause, deciding that there are a number of deputies who will buckle under the pressure and vote Mr. Dimas in at the eleventh hour.

At the moment, the prime minister’s team is gathering the deputies and Mr. Dimas is limiting himself to calling deputies who have already placed themselves in support of his candidacy to thank them or to call deputies who he already has a personal relationship with.