The level of participation in the centre-left Movement for Change KINAL party’s leadership elections has exceeded all expectations..

Shortly after 7pm, 257,529 citizens had voted, exceeding the level of participation in the 2017 party leadership race, when 211,191 people participated, electing the late leader Fofi Gennimata.

Some candidates had said that any gain on the number of 2017 voters would be considered a minimum level for success.

Over 87,000 voted in Attica

The voting was extended to 8pm wherever necessary, at the request of candidates Andreas Loverdos and former PM George Papandreou, so that all who were waiting could vote, and the more optimistic hoped for a participation of 280,000.

In Athens this afternoon there were large queues of voters due to the large turnout and a number of people left before voting.

EDEKAP announced that wherever there was a shortage of ballots due to the large turnout, ballots would be photocopied, stamped, and mographed by the president of the precinct’s electoral committee.

At 5pm, the party’s competent EDEKAP ethics and certification committee (which is in charge of conducting the election) decided to extend voting to 8pm, one hour later than had been scheduled.

Papandreou camp

Earlier, Papandreou’s camp requested an extension and Loverdos’ team agreed, noting that it had requested a larger number of voting places.

Androulakis’ camp also agreed that it was self-evident that one would extend the voting time wherever necessary.

According to the EDEKAP committee, after 11am about 500 people were voting per minute and that fell to 430 per minute in the afternoon.

By 2:20pm 150,000 people had voted, compared to 109,000 by the same hour in 2017.

The polls had earlier closed for diaspora Greeks in Australia, where results were released.

There, 108 people voted, with Nikos Androulakis garnering 11.1 percent, Pavlos Geroulanos 1.85 percent, Haris Kastanidis 2.78 percent, Pavlos Christidis 2.78 percent, Andreas Loverdos 31.48 percent, and Papandreou 50 percent.

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