ATHENS — Greek conservative leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis is on course to win a second term as prime minister and a majority in parliament, latest results show.

He beat center-left rival Syriza in May, but called new elections in a bid to win enough seats to govern alone. His New Democracy party polled 40.4%, 20 points ahead of Syriza, with three-quarters of the vote counted.

The vote came 11 days after a migrant boat tragedy off Greece in which 500 people are thought to have died. Although, three days of mourning were held, the disaster had little effect on the campaign and Greeks voted to maintain economic stability.

Under Greek election rules for a second election, the conservatives are awarded a bonus number of seats in parliament, but the exact number depends on the final result.

Former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza party was unable to narrow the margin of last month’s defeat.

But there was success for the newly created far-right Spartans party, which was set to pass the 3% vote-share threshold to enter parliament.

The Spartans only emerged as a political force this month when the Greek Supreme Court banned another far-right party, the Greeks, and its jailed founder threw his weight behind them.

Greek commentators spoke of a “thriller” involving a number of smaller parties trying to get over the threshold.

But the main story of the election was the majority secured by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, 55, over Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza. The New Democracy leader is a rarity in Greek politics, having increased his share of the vote since the 2019 elections.

He is credited with successfully returning the Greek economy to stability and growth after a severe debt crisis and three international bailouts. Tsipras had led Greece at the peak of the crisis from 2015.

Although many Greeks are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis, voters chose to stick with the party promising lower taxes and improved public health.

While New Democracy was heading for a big win, the left-wing vote was fragmented, with the Socialist PASOK set for more than 11% and the Communist KKE on around 7%.

The conservative leader has formed a reputation as a Teflon-coated leader, fending off a series of damaging crises in the past year, including a rail disaster and a wire-tapping scandal that brought down the intelligence chief and his own nephew, who worked as the prime minister’s chief of staff.

Greece was being led by a caretaker government when a migrant boat sank off the south-west coast in the early hours of June 14.

Since the migrant crisis, the views of most Greek voters have shifted in favor of stricter, more conservative policies, says Panos Koliastasis, assistant professor of politics at the University of Peloponnese.

“The reason is rooted in the 2020 migration crisis on the Evros [river], when Turkey tried to push thousands of migrants into Greek territory and the Mitsotakis government acted swiftly.

So the greater part of the public perceives the migration issue as an external threat to national sovereignty.”

Mitsotakis, a Harvard University graduate, comes from one of Greece’s most prominent political families. His late father Constantine Mitsotakis served as prime minister in the 1990s, his sister served as foreign minister and his nephew is the mayor of Athens.

He has promised to rebrand Greece as a pro-business and fiscally responsible eurozone member. — BBC