Greece has now officially scrapped plans for a referendum on the Euro bailout plan. Our research shows that a small majority (53%) of Greeks did not want the referendum, the exact subject matter and formulation of which remains unspecified and unclear. In our view, a majority (79%) of Greeks wants to remain in the eurozone. We note, however, that willingness to keep the Euro falls dramatically when the issue is raised in the context of austerity measures, which leads us to believe that if a referendum – on whether to remain in the Eurozone subject to harsh austerity conditions – was held today, almost every second Greek (46%) might opt for leaving the Eurozone. Similarly to patterns of violent demonstrations, the trend in pro-exit attitude is extremely volatile and directly linked to the current (daily) dominating topics, and to austerity and fear in particular. Between November 4th and 6th, there was a significant increase in pro-exit attitude, as illustrated by the image below.
This analysis is based on large volumes of Greek-language open sources including social media.
