Valuable voters

It used to be possible to predict the outcome of an election with some certainty. The key lay in guessing which way the middle-ground voters would swing; those who had voted for PASOK's Costas Simitis and then New Democracy's Costas Karamanlis, those who had voted for Karamanlis and then George Papandreou, and thought of themselves as "homeless" centrists. They were - and still are - a tough crowd, but also very mature.

The crisis and bailouts turned everything on its head. ND's initial anti-memorandum stance alienated them and PASOK seemed too vague. To Potami brought some relief because it held the promise of becoming the first truly centrist party made up of serious people with no connections to the old party mechanisms.

In the second set of elections in 2012, middle-ground voters were spooked by the specter of Grexit and the likelihood of an immature SYRIZA coming...