Greece conservatives win as voters favor protest parties

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/05/greece-conservatives-win-national-election.html

May 6, 2012 | 2:08 pm

ATHENS -- 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.

Anger over punishing austerity cuts pushed voters to a number of protest parties, including the hard-left Syriza party, which unseated scores of Socialist and conservative backbenchers, and the far-right Golden Dawn party, whose anti-immigrant stand and thuggish tactics have sparked widespread concern.