Golden Dawn Rise Disturbs Parties

More specifically, with the votes tallied so far, Ilias Kasidiaris came in fourth for the Athens municipality with 16.12%, just a breath away from ND backed Aris Spiliotopoulos. By comparison, in the national elections it had only gotten 7% in the Athens constituency. The same picture appears inn the Attica region, where the party got 11.1% compare to 7.9% it had got in the 2012 elections. In Thessaloniki, the party's candidate got 7.71% coming in forth, to the surprise of pollsters.

Hellenic Dawn appears to be registering a drop in Piraeus, with 5.68%, as against 8.26% that the party got in the 2012 elections.

Government VP Evangelos Venizelos noted that it was the duty of democratic forces to fight against fascism and violence, while DIMAR chief Fotis Kouvelis stressed that the numbers of votes Golden Dawn was given creates the obligation for all democratic forces to deal with this dangerous phenomenon.

These sentiments were echoed by KKE's Dimitris Koutsoumbas, while “To Potami”s Stavros Theodorakis said that it would be an insult to the country if such a regressive, old, violent force takes third place, instead of his own party.