By ALKMAN GRANITSAS and CHARLES FORELLE

Charles Forelle/The Wall Street Journal The working-class town of Agia Varvara voted heavily for Syriza in May, fleeing a mainstream socialist party.

ZOGRAFOU, Greece—On Sunday, Greece's future in the euro zone will be in the hands of voters like Kety Bakirtzoglu: longtime backers of the entrenched political establishment who feel burned and are ready to roll the dice on something new.
For years, Ms. Bakirtzoglu was a stalwart socialist voter from the Pasok party's core, Greece's giant public sector. Then, as part of a bid to meet austerity goals mandated by its bailout, the socialist government pushed her out of her job at a state housing agency.
Furious, she has found a new horse to ride: Syriza, the upstart party on the radical left that promises to tear up the Greek bailout deal's painful reforms. Syriza and its firebrand leader, Alexis Tsipras, surged from nowhere to second place in May's inconclusive voting, striking fear in European capitals of a cataclysmic standoff that could fracture the euro zone.

WSJ's Charles Forelle reports on the shifting politics of Athens B, a giant district of nearly 1.5 million voters surrounding central Athens that has voted for the winner of nearly every Greek election since 1974.

The fear could become reality if Syriza lures enough disaffected voters like Ms. Bakirtzoglu to form a government. The election is too close to call, a race between Syriza and New Democracy, a conservative pro-Europe party that barely edged out Syriza in May.
Her town is part of a district surrounding Athens that has picked the eventual prime minister in every Greek election for nearly 40 years. It is the ultimate swing district, like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida rolled into one.
The district, known as "Athens B," encompasses both conservative, hillside enclaves in the north that are the domain of Greece's moneyed magnates, and rough working-class districts hard by the port that are a stronghold of Greece's Communists. It is home to 1.4 million of Greece's 10 million voters.
"Because of its size and diversity, Athens' second district effectively reflects the entire country," says Anthony Livanios, a political analyst. "The party that wins in Athens B wins the elections. If you win in the second district, you become prime minister."
The two mainstream parties, Pasok and New Democracy, long swapped control of Greece's government. But more than four years of recession, and more than two years in flat-out economic crisis, have upended the status quo.
Pasok won power in a landslide victory in 2009 under George Papandreou, scion to Greece's most prominent political family. As prime minister, he was then blamed for negotiating Greece's first bailout in 2010, agreeing to round after round of painful cuts until his government collapsed in late 2011. The other mainstream party, New Democracy, might have surged on Pasok's weakness, but it assented to momentous cuts in 2011 and has suffered the taint since.


Syriza has rushed to fill the void.
Until recently, Syriza, which says it doesn't want to leave the euro, was barely a party—just a motley alliance of left-wing groups whose offbeat politics didn't find a home in Pasok or in the established Communist Party. Until this year, Syriza's best showing was 5% in parliamentary elections in 2009.
Times have changed. Its shabby headquarters building in central Athens has a creaky elevator, faded linoleum and furniture that might have been scavenged from an elementary school a half-century ago. But squirreled away in the back of an upper floor is a crisp and modern television studio for the many interviews Mr. Tsipras now commands.
Mr. Tsipras, 37 years old, is a professional protester, a man who learned to corral anger and dissatisfaction into a political force as a student leader in the 1990s. Though trained as an engineer, he has spent little time working in the field, devoting himself to party politics. As a young man, he was a Communist, but Greece's once-potent Communist Party fractured in the late 1980s and 1990s, and Mr. Tsipras aligned himself with a splinter coalition of radicals that evolved into Syriza.
In this year's campaigns, Mr. Tsipras has drawn on his radical roots, casting Greece's troubles as the fault of shadowy foreigners in European capitals.
The mainstream parties "looted Greece, and afterward they took the Greek flag and they offered it to Angela Merkel," the German chancellor, Mr. Tsipras said in a campaign rally in Athens Thursday.
Though Syriza's message has caught on, not all of the disaffected are ready to embrace the party. Anna Konstantoulaki, a third-year Spanish-literature student at the University of Athens, voted in May for a tiny party. She doesn't know what to do now. She is upset with mainstream parties but not sure Mr. Tsipras is capable of running the country.
"I am very confused," she says. "The last few days, I can't stop thinking about what is going to happen." She adds: "I'm scared, actually."
Greece's Parties

Sunday's Greek vote is being viewed as a de facto referendum on the country's future with the euro zone. Read more about the main contenders.


Syriza's man in Zografou is Stavros Arbilias, a party organizer who works out of an office beneath a clothing store outfitted with an ancient computer and a cassette-player boombox. He sells the party's plan to reject the European bailout terms and press for a better deal that keeps Greece in the euro and provides relief from the crushing economic burden.
In Zografou, the party helps organize a local used-clothing exchange and mobilizes protests outside the houses of homeowners facing foreclosure. It openly advocates more public spending—the opposite of the European authorities' prescription.
"The two big parties are claiming we should have an even smaller state," says Mr. Arbilias. "Our priority is not to pay the loans or the interest on the loans. For Syriza, the priority is the people."
Ms. Bakirtzoglu, for one, is sold. "They had a success" in the May election, she says. "I want to fortify the success."
A friend and former co-worker at the housing agency, Despina Margoula, is on board, too. Ms. Margoula, 47, lives with her mother now that she is out of a job. Her 19-year-old son can't find work, either.
"I'm against the memorandum"—as the bailout deal is known—"and for leaving the euro," she says. "The only thing I know now is that things are worse."
New Democracy is trying to exploit concerns about the consequences of a Syriza-led government. It has equated a vote for Syriza to a vote for a euro exit, which polls show eight in 10 Greeks don't want.
"The key for us is to try and get closer to the voters, explain our program and also what will happen in Greece the day after the elections if they don't vote for us," says Christos Parras, New Democracy's campaign manager for greater Athens.
New Democracy has played that "day after" scenario—evoking fears of a disorderly euro exit, bank runs and food and fuel shortages should Syriza win—as its trump card. The message has gained some traction.
"We know we have momentum," said Syriza parliamentarian Euclid Tsakalotos, "but we don't know how many people—fearing a euro exit, fearing a bank collapse, fearing widespread shortages—will vote New Democracy at the last moment." Elected in May from Athens B, Mr. Tsakalotos, an economics professor, is running for the seat again this month.
Syriza may well have the edge in Athens B. The capital has felt the brunt of successive waves of austerity measures, and unemployment in the greater metropolitan area is 23%, about a point above the national average. Interviews with voters across the district—rich and poor, left and right, old and young—indicate a deep-seated anger with the political class that reflects the sorry state in which Greece finds itself.
North of Zografou, a bit higher and a bit farther from the densest part of the urban sprawl, is the town of Maroussi.
In times past, it was a place of leisure, a calming, breezy vacation spot up the gentle north slope of the coastal basin in which Athens swelters. Today, the metropolitan sprawl has engulfed the old town. Maroussi was long a prosperous place, but now there are complaints about poverty and unemployed illegal immigrants.
"If you came here two years ago, you'd see people sitting here, drinking their ouzo," said Manolis Panagis, a retired technician for a company that manufactures winemaking equipment. "This used to be an expensive area. But the crisis has hit hard."

A telling barometer is the number of failing shops, the backbone of Greek small business. That decline has been evident on city streets for more than a year, but today the reading in Maroussi is particularly grim.
One pedestrian alley appears almost to have given up: A sign swings over the door of a recently closed jeweler, which is next door to a children's clothing store that looks as if it left long ago. Across the way, a home-goods store and an Italian fashion store are offering 30% off; another vendor is selling everything for €7.99. A half-dozen storefronts are open. They offer to buy people's gold.
To many voters, both Pasok and New Democracy are to blame for the economy's decline.
"For 35 years after the dictatorship, they have ruled," says Andreas Raptis, a retired water-company administrator having coffee and cigarettes on the terrace of a cafe in Maroussi one recent evening. "It was not with honor or morality, and the people have punished them for that."
Pasok edged out New Democracy in Maroussi in 2009, part of the socialists' convincing win in Athens B.
Messrs. Raptis and Panagis were both once active Pasok members, secretaries in local party committees. No more. Both voted for small parties in the May election. Mr. Panagis is considering a vote for Syriza on Sunday; Mr. Raptis is undecided.
If Maroussi has been dented by the crisis, the poorer parts of Athens B have been battered. Across the city is Agia Varvara, a staunchly working-class area choked by unemployment and encroaching poverty.
Agia Varvara was once "the castle of Pasok," says the municipality's deputy mayor. In 2009, 54% of its votes went to that socialist party. Last month, 9.6%.
New Democracy's share fell by half in Agia Varvara. Syriza's vote tripled, catapulting the leftists into first place.
Agia Varvara has been hit hard by budget cutbacks and the recession now in its fifth year. The central government has sent it less money for schools and public works. Mayor George Kaplanis is having trouble collecting trash. His food bank is more popular than ever—and its funding runs out this month.
"The two parties have lost their humanity," the mayor says. "If the citizens condemn them, it is because they have lost their humanity and their sensitivity."
In a Cretan restaurant in Agia Varvara, men drink ouzo, eat grilled sardines and rigorously ignore a no-smoking sign. For some here, the election on May 6 was a chance to vent their frustration. The question now is whether the venting is out of their system.
Vagelis Koveos, a recent pensioner and former New Democracy supporter, voted for Golden Dawn, a neo-Nazi party, because, he said, neither mainstream party did enough to control illegal immigration.
Pantelis Prentakis, a math teacher and onetime Pasok voter, cast his ballot for Social Pact, a micro-party led by a former Pasok minister and party heavyweight who broke with the Socialists over the austerity program. Mr. Prentakis says he couldn't accept the spending cuts advanced by Pasok's then-leader, Mr. Papandreou, in exchange for the bailout. "It is very difficult to support a political group that has adopted a rightist policy," he says.
But the men say that in this election they'll come back to the traditional parties. Social Pact didn't get enough votes and isn't participating this time around, so Mr. Prentakis will reluctantly vote for Pasok. The party, he says, "can change again."
Mr. Koveos says he reflected on his vote and came to believe he wasn't like Golden Dawn's extremists. He says he'll vote for New Democracy.
If New Democracy is to win Athens B, it needs not only to hold off the rise of Syriza on the left but also smaller rivals on the right. That means it needs a particularly strong showing in the very wealthy suburbs to the north.
Psychiko is where Athens' old money lives. The streets are quiet and shaded. They are dotted with turn-of-the-century villas that were home to Greece's aristocracy when the country had a king.
One of the childhood residences of Prince Philip, the consort to Queen Elizabeth II, is here. This is a rare part of Athens where placards announcing construction projects outnumber "for rent" signs.
In 2009, New Democracy took nearly 50% of the vote in Psychiko and its equally posh neighbor, Filothei. That plunged to 21% in May.
Robert Danon was one of the many former New Democracy voters lured by Drassi, a pro-free-market party founded by a renegade New Democracy politician.
Mr. Danon has been a commodities broker, a private banker and a real-estate developer. Now he is a business consultant looking, he says, for the next opportunity. Business is overburdened with regulations and taxes, Mr. Danon says. He had hopes that New Democracy's ascension to power in 2004 might shift the tide. It didn't.
"We were very disappointed with the government of New Democracy," he says. "When you get into power, you have all these fringe benefits. They were part of the system. Nothing really changed."
Write to Alkman Granitsas at [email protected] and Charles Forelle at [email protected]