Greek voters have been concerned mainly with the economy and living standards
Kyriakos Mitsotakis looks set to secure a bigger win than a month ago in Sunday's election
Greeks are voting for the second time in a month with conservative ex-Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis hoping to secure a big majority.
Greek conservative leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis is set to win a second term as prime minister and a majority in parliament, exit polls suggest.
He convincingly beat his centre-left rival in May but called new elections in a bid to govern Greece alone.
He beat centre-left rival Syriza in May, but called new elections in a bid to win enough seats to govern alone.
Sunday's vote comes little more than a week after a migrant boat tragedy off the Greek coast in which 500 people are thought to have died.
His New Democracy party is forecast to win 39-42% of the vote, far ahead of Syriza on 16.3-19.3%.
But the disaster has had little effect on the campaign.
The vote came 11 days after a migrant boat tragedy off Greece in which 500 people are thought to have died.
Mr Mitsotakis's conservatives won last month's elections by a 20-point margin over the centre-left Syriza party of Alexis Tsipras, another former prime minister, and he is confident of a repeat victory that would hand him a second term.
Although three days of mourning were held, the disaster had little effect on the campaign and Greeks voted to maintain economic stability.
Voting continues until 19:00 (16:00 GMT).
Under Greek election rules for a second election, the conservatives are awarded a bonus number of seats in parliament, but the exact number depends on the final result.
Without a majority of more than 150 in the 300-seat parliament, Mr Mitsotakis says his New Democracy party cannot form the stable government that is necessary.
Exit polls suggest a poor result for former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras's Syriza party.
"In uncertain times, Greece needs a government that will not depend on fragile majorities," he told a rally in Syntagma square in central Athens on Friday night.
But there was success for the newly created far-right Spartans party, which looked set to pass the 3% vote-share threshold to enter parliament.
The big difference in Sunday's election is that the winning party is awarded up between 20 and 50 bonus seats, so a similar repeat victory would give him the mandate he wants.
The Spartans only emerged as a political force this month when the Greek Supreme Court banned another far-right party, the Greeks, and its jailed founder threw his weight behind them.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis wants to rule with an outright majority, arguing Greece needs "stable" government
Greek commentators spoke of a "thriller" involving a number of smaller parties trying to get over the threshold.
Mr Mitsotakis is widely seen as having successfully returned the Greek economy to stability and growth after a severe debt crisis and three international bailouts. Although many Greeks are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis, voters last month chose to stick with the party promising lower taxes and improved public health.
But the main story of the election was what looked like an increased margin of victory for Kyriakos Mitsotakis, whose conservatives had already beaten Alexis Tsipras's Syriza by 20 points in May.
He has formed a reputation as a Teflon-coated leader, fending off a series of damaging crises in the past year including a rail disaster and a wire-tapping scandal that brought down the intelligence chief and his own nephew, who worked as the prime minister's chief of staff.
He is credited with successfully returning the Greek economy to stability and growth after a severe debt crisis and three international bailouts.
His centre-left rival faces an uphill task. Alexis Tsipras told supporters in Thessaloniki that voters were being offered two different visions of Greece: "a country and society of humanity, democracy and justice" or a right-wing programme that put the profits of the view above the lives of the many.
Although many Greeks are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis, voters chose to stick with the party promising lower taxes and improved public health.
The two leaders took very different approaches when a migrant boat sank off the south-west coast only 11 days ago.
While New Democracy was heading for at least 39% of the vote, the left-wing vote was fragmented, with the Socialist PASOK set for 11.2-13.2% and the Communist KKE on 6.5-8.5%.
The campaign came to an abrupt halt as Greece observed three days of mourning and questions have been asked about the response of the Greek coastguard in the hours before hundreds of people lost their lives.
The conservative leader has formed a reputation as a Teflon-coated leader, fending off a series of damaging crises in the past year, including a rail disaster and a wire-tapping scandal that brought down the intelligence chief and his own nephew, who worked as the prime minister's chief of staff.
Mr Mitsotakis has mounted a passionate defence of the coastguard and condemned the people smugglers as "scum".
Greece was being led by a caretaker government when a migrant boat sank off the south-west coast in the early hours of 14 June.
Greece ignored offer to watch migrant boat - EU agency
New data casts doubt on Greek account of boat disaster
Mr Tsipras did raise concerns, though.
He said that, at the time he was in charge during the 2015 European migrant crisis, when more than a million people travelled through Greece, the coastguard, police and military had all worked "with one objective, human life".
Alexis Tsipras has seen Syriza's support fall dramatically since the 2019 elections
Since the migrant crisis, the views of most Greek voters have shifted in favour of stricter, more conservative policies, says Panos Koliastasis, assistant professor of politics at the University of Peloponnese.
"The reason is rooted in the 2020 migration crisis on the Evros [river], when Turkey tried to push thousands of migrants into Greek territory and the Mitsotakis government acted swiftly. So the greater part of the public perceives the migration issue as an external threat to national sovereignty."
Mr Mitsotakis is also benefiting from the fragmentation of the Greek left. As the debt crisis mounted in 2012, voters on the left gradually abandoned the old Socialist Pasok party in favour of Alexis Tsipras's more energetic style.
But Syriza's fortunes waned under a Tsipras government and the Socialists are now the third political force in Greece. Neither of the two left-of-centre parties will go into coalition with the conservatives.
The New Democracy leader is a rarity in Greek politics, having increased his share of the vote since the 2019 elections.
He also won the youth vote, with more than 30% of 17 to 34 year-olds, reaching out to voters on TikTok and other social media platforms.
Panos Koliastasis highlights a remark by Mr Mitsotakis last November in which he told journalists his 2023 election campaign began the day after he won in 2019.
"Hardly a day went by without Mitsotakis giving an interview, a press conference, a visit to some area or foreign travel," he says.
His focus on positive messages appeared to chime with Greek voters whose main concern was the economy and living standards, rather than inflation or the worst rail disaster in Greek history last February which claimed 57 lives, many of them students.
