Kasidiaris-backed Spartiates party makes it into Parliament

The far-right Spartiates (Spartans) party, which has been backed by jailed neo-Nazi Ilias Kasidiaris, looks set to cross the 3% threshold needed to make it into Parliament, with the latest exit polls showing it clinching as much as 5.6% of the vote.

Vassilis Stingas - who founded the party in 2017 after an increasingly right-leaning trajectory that began in Antonis Samaras' Political Spring, before passing through Giorgos Karatzaferis' Popular Orthodox Rally and Vassilis Kapernaros' Radical National Rally - thanked Kasidiaris for his support on Sunday night. Kasidiaris was one of dozens of key members of the now-defunct neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party convicted of being a member of a criminal organization, among other charges. He tried to run in both the May 21 and June 25 elections under different guises, but was blocked by the Supreme Court.

Together with the...