A day after Greek Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras overhauled his negotiating team in an effort to speed up debt talks and unlock bailout funds benchmarked for Greece, the prime minister said on Tuesday that he might resort to calling a public referendum on any deal with international creditors. He said that a package that goes beyond the political mandate that resulted in his party’s victory on January 25 could result in a referendum.
Citizens polled by Marc for private ALPHA TV and by GPO for private MEGA TV state that Greeks do not want to go to the polls on the issue.
GPO saw that a resounding “No” to a referendum is given by 62% of Greeks. The poll found SYRIZA 14.5 units ahead of the main opposition conservative New Democracy (ND) party with 36.5% and 22% respectively, followed by centrist Potami with 6.5%, the Greek Communist Party (KKE) and the ultranationalist Golden Dawn (GD) at 5.5%, followed by the government’s right-wing anti-austerity junior partner Independent Greeks (ANEL) at 5% and socialist PASOK at 4%.
GPO found that 37% of Greeks are in favor of a referendum, whereas 61.9% are against and just 1.1% said that they did not know or did not want to answer.
Two out of three Greeks questioned stated that they would not want elections in the case of a deadlock in negotiations with Greece’s creditors. A resounding 72.2% said that they don’t believe there should be new elections whereas 26.3% are in favor of early elections and 1.5% did not give an opinion.
In its opinion poll MARC found that 35.6% would vote for SYRIZA as first party again (majority), followed by 20.8% that would vote for ND.
Despite SYRIZA’s lead there has been a 10-unit drop in support over the last two months, whereas ND support rose by 2 units.
Only 37.3% told MARC they would be in favor of a referendum, whereas 58.1% were against.
Regarding funding, 54.2% of Greeks still want funding even if this means that crushing bailout measures would be imposed as opposed to 37% who would be willing to see Greece experience default.
65.4% of Greeks would still like the country to remain in the euro area, opposed to 27.3% who wish to see a return to the drachma.
56.8% of those questioned believe that there is a fear of bankruptcy bearing in mind the government’s handling of negotiations, whereas 38.8% do not.
50.5% are in favor of the government’s handling of negotiations, slightly ahead of the 48.2% who are not.
65.1% are in favor of a compromise solution, whereas 31% of citizens do not wish to see further compromise.
There is cautious optimism concerning the government’s handling of Greece’s problems (52.4%).