The first official exit poll in Greek election has been released showing the anti-austerity Syriza party leading with between 35.5%-39.5% of the national vote.

The party looks to be comfortably ahead of closest rivals the centre-right New Democracy party, which the poll suggested was on track to gain between 23%-27%. The far-right Golden Dawn party and newly formed centre-left To Potami (The River) are duelling for third place with between 6.4%-8% of the vote.

Although the exit polls have proven a relatively unreliable predictor of the eventual result in recent years, it at least provides the first indication of whether Syriza has succeeded in bringing its poll lead to bear at the voting booth. With the share suggested by the exit poll the party still has a chance of winning an overall majority.

Whether its achieves that feat will now depend heavily on how many of the smaller parties reach the 3% threshold needed to get representation in parliament. Yet even if it falls short, winning the largest share of any single party would still be testament the remarkable rise of a party that was only formed in 2004 as a loose coalition of leftist parties and groups.

As Lorcan Roche Kelly points out on Twitter, only three years ago PASOK (which the exit poll suggests could get 4.2%-5.2% of the vote) had 160 seats in Greece’s 300-seat parliament. Syriza had 13.

The table below shows the percentage of the vote needed for any single party to gain an overall majority in the Greek parliament:

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