By MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG, Politico.eu

European leaders can breathe a sigh of relief after Greek voters returned Alexis Tsipras to power in a stronger-than-expected victory that will be read as a popular endorsement of the country’s latest bailout deal.

Preliminary results late Sunday showed Tsipras’ leftist Syriza party with 36 percent of the vote, well ahead of New Democracy, its center-right rival, which garnered about 28 percent.

The result means Syriza is likely to renew its coalition with the Independent Greeks, a nationalist party that won about 4 percent of the vote. Both parties have committed to support Greece’s latest bailout package.

Such an outcome seemed unlikely in recent days. Polls leading up to the vote put the two largest parties neck and neck and signaled that the Independent Greeks might not win enough votes to get into parliament. That would have forced the winner to court smaller centrist parties, a constellation that some worried could prove unstable.

The convincing win gives Tsipras a freer hand to undertake a long list of reforms, including controversial labor market and pension overhauls required by Europe in exchange for the €86 billion bailout.

“It’s a big win for Tsipras,” said Yannis Koutsomitis, an independent Greek political analyst. “He received a validation for his policies.”

The new government will have to act fast, however, because Greece only has until the end of October to comply with most of Europe’s demands.

Sidelined radicals

During the campaign, Tsipras struggled to justify accepting the harsh bailout terms and ignoring the results of a July referendum in which a clear majority of Greeks rejected the measures. Even die-hard Syriza supporters were bracing for the worst.

“We were thinking we might have lost it,” said Evangelos Achillopoulos, a Syriza functionary following the vote tally Sunday night in central Athens. “But it seems Syriza is attracting a different mix of people.”

European politicians said they believed the result signaled Greeks wanted more stability and were willing to push forward with the bailout program.

“The Greek people awarded Tsipras for two reasons: He reached a responsible and sustainable compromise in Europe and put aside the most radical forces in Syriza,” said Gianni Pittella, the Socialists and Democrats leader in the European Parliament.

In the run-up to the election, many in Europe worried that the vote would either sweep Tsipras from power, encouraging him to attack the bailout from the opposition, or result in a fragile coalition. Syriza appears to have lost less than one percentage point since the last election in January.

Even with the win, however, it’s unclear whether Tsipras will have enough sway to overcome the remaining resistance within Syriza to some of the more controversial reforms. A group of more than 50 Syriza MPs has vowed to continue to oppose some aspects of the bailout agreement. With only a slim parliamentary majority, Tsipras will need their support.

Party of the poor

Despite those challenges, the election result suggests voters were more worried about the prospects of returning New Democracy to power. The party ruled Greece for much of the past 40 years and many Greeks associate it with the kind of corruption and clientelism widely blamed for Greece’s crisis.

Syriza, for all its shortcomings, is still seen as the party of the poor.

“People affected by austerity didn’t trust New Democracy to lead them through the bailout years,” Koutsomitis said.

During the campaign, Tsipras promised to renegotiate some of the harsher elements of the bailout package and many voters appear to have taken him by his word.

Syriza rose to power in January on a promise to end austerity. The election was followed by months of wrangling with the EU that nearly resulted in Greece’s exit from the euro. Tsipras dodged that outcome with an 11th hour agreement to accept Europe’s terms in July.

Tsipras called the election last month after a revolt by extreme leftists in Syriza who refused to accept his about-face on austerity.

The gambit paid off. The move allowed Tsipras to cleanse Syriza of its most radical elements and reaffirm his hold on the party. The breakaway leftist faction, which ran as a separate party in the election, failed to win enough votes to enter parliament.