Greece set to defy EU, IMF

Alexis Tsipras, center, leader of Greece's Syriza left-wing main opposition waves to his supporters after voting at a polling station in Athens. Photo / AP

A radical leftist party that wants to cancel Greece's European Union debts of more than 200 billion ($300 billion) went into today's election with a seven-point lead.

If Syriza wins, it would be the first anti-austerity party to be elected to government in the eurozone. Polls closed today at 6am NZT.

Syriza's firebrand leader, Alexis Tsipras, has threatened to roll back five years of austerity policies, reject fiscal rigour and cancel the 240 billion in loans that the EU and the International Monetary Fund provided in an emergency bailout.

The last poll before the vote gave Syriza a lead of nearly seven points over the conservative New Democracy Party of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who has become deeply unpopular with Greeks for his austerity policies. The poll indicated that Syriza would win 33 per cent of the vote, although other surveys put the party's lead at 5 per cent.

Syriza argues that austerity, widely seen as a German-led initiative, has been a disaster, producing 50 per cent youth unemployment and a 25 per cent contraction in the country's economy.

At his final campaign rally, Tsipras, a former communist, said the days of Greece being used by the EU and IMF were about to come to an end.

"This is the end of Greece as a laboratory animal," he told a cheering crowd in Heraklion, Crete, the final stop on his campaign trail.

Voting for Syriza was an act of "resistance" to Brussels and Berlin's crushing demands, he said. "Light has won over darkness. Victory and a majority are within our grasp."

If the polls are accurate, Syriza could win an absolute majority in Parliament.