This comes via the BBC:
What is clear, once you get away from the incessant shouting on Greek TV, and the flash-bang battles between the anarchists and the police, is that this rapid breakdown of certainty is having a big, but immeasurable, effect on people’s political expectations.
The polls tell one part of the story. The Pasok party, which tried and failed to implement the first austerity bill until replaced by a technocratic coalition in October, is now down to 11%. (Epikaria poll, 16 February 2012)
New Democracy, the centre-right party that expected to form the government – it has been a two- horse race since the restoration of democracy in the 1980s – is also in trouble. Its own vote – 27.5% – is not enough to form a government. And 20 MPs just got expelled for opposing the bailout.
The Christian Orthodox hard-right party, LAOS, has also split, after leaving the coalition government during the austerity vote last Sunday. I heard two perfectly ordinary guys, sitting next to me in a cafe, comment: "I don’t care if the splitters from LAOS were once fascists. They are right."
The far left is now polling a combined 43.5%. The extreme-right party Golden Dawn is on 2.5%. And there’s an air of mania.
My takeaway here is that people are desperate and they are willing to support any party that has a solution to their economic plight, irrespective of whether that party is considered extreme.
Read the full account below.