Battle for middle ground begins

Poll sees DIKO-EDEK coalition in next elections

A POLL has strongly suggested that a tug of war is already underway ahead of the next national elections, revolving around who will attract the bulk of centrist or “moderate” voters.
The phone survey, carried out by pollsters AC Nielsen for Politis newspaper, showed considerable support for an alliance or coalition between the DIKO and EDEK parties, widely regarded as centrist.

Results indicated that these two were the most likely to form a partnership, thereby staving off the threat of leakage to the two largest parties, DISY and communist AKEL.
Asked which party they would most like to see participating in a unified centrist party, 52 per cent of respondents picked ruling DIKO; 42 per cent said EDEK. Next came DISY (20 per cent) and AKEL (19 per cent).

Nevertheless, political pundits said the figures recorded for DISY and AKEL were far from negligible, hinting that the profile of these two parties was beginning to change. This was more the case with DISY, traditionally seen as right wing, at least up until the late 1990s.
One of the major implications of these findings was that, for DIKO and socialists EDEK, the stakes would be on how to prevent voter leakage and avoid losing the momentum gained in the recent Euro elections.

On June 10 the socialists almost doubled their support among the electorate, while DIKO hung onto their 17 per cent all-time high.

AC Nielsen’s poll was one of the first after the European Parliament elections to gauge trends on the political scene, but to a great extent it was also coloured by parties’ stance in the April referenda.