ATHENS: Greece's anti-austerity leftist party Syriza will easily win Sunday's election but may fall short of an absolute majority in parliament by as little as one seat, the first official projection of the vote showed.
An official from Singular Logic, which processes the election results for the interior ministry, said Syriza would get between 149 to 151 seats in the 300-seat parliament, adding that the firm was officially projecting 150 seats but that there was a 0.5 percentage point margin of error.
"We have a thriller over the outright majority," said Michalis Kariotoglou from Singular Logic. "We might need to wait until all votes are counted."
Syriza was expected to take 36.5 percent of the vote, ahead of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras' centre-right New Democracy which was seen taking 27.7 percent, according to the projection based on partial results.
The official projection, which has historically been broadly accurate, showed seven parties will surpass a 3 percent threshold to enter the Greek parliament with former Prime Minister George Papandreou's new party failing to make the cut.
That would boost Syriza's chances of an outright win since the since exact level of support needed for an absolute majority depends on the share of the vote taken by parties that fail to enter parliament.
The far-right Golden Dawn party will take third spot with between 6.3 percent of the vote, followed by the new centrist To Potami party and then the KKE Communists.
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