In Greece conservatives win as voters favor protest parties

Greek conservatives won at the polls Sunday in a national election but fell far short of enough seats to take power, deadlocking parliament and deepening unease over the country’s economic future and its continued membership in the Eurozone.

With 30% of the votes counted, Antonis Samaras and his center-right New Democracy party had 20.3% of the vote, far from the support needed to secure an outright majority in Greece’s 300-seat parliament. The Socialists took a brutal beating, with support for their new leader and former Greek finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, plummeting to 14.1%, down a shocking 30 percentage points from the party’s landslide victory in 2009.

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Posted in * Economics, Politics, * International News & Commentary, --European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010, Economy, Europe, Greece