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 After three rounds of voting, the only candidate in the race,
former European Commissioner Stavros Dimas, fell short of the 180
votes needed to become president, triggering a procedure leading to
the dissolution of parliament.
Samaras immediately announced that he would meet outgoing President
Karolos Papoulias on Tuesday to propose holding parliamentary
elections on Jan. 25 and called on Greek voters to ensure stability
was preserved.
Opinion polls point to a victory by the radical leftist Syriza
party, which wants to wipe out a big part of Greece's debt, and
cancel the terms of a bailout from the European Union and
International Monetary Fund that Greece still needs to pay its
bills.
"With the will of our people, in a few days bailouts tied to
austerity will be a thing of the past," Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras
said after the vote. "The future has already begun."
 The result leaves financial markets and Greece's European Union
partners facing weeks of uncertainty that could undermine fragile
signs of economic recovery and derail its public finances.
Syriza has held a steady lead in opinion polls for months, although
its advantage over Samaras' conservative New Democracy party has
narrowed in recent weeks. Weakness among potential coalition
partners of both could mean that whichever party wins in January
will struggle to form a government and may not survive long.
VOLATILE MARKETS
Underlining the potential volatility facing markets, the main Athens
stock market index fell 7 percent while Greek bond yields jumped
above 9 percent. The main banking stocks index was down more than 11
percent.
"The outcome of the final vote extends the political uncertainty for
at least one month," said Theodore Krintas, head of wealth
management at Attica Bank in Athens. "One cannot know if the result
of early elections will be a viable government."
"No significant economic decisions can be made before there is a new
government and this is already reflected in the markets today," he
said.
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Samaras, who had been pushing for an early end to the deeply
unpopular bailout program, brought forward the presidential vote
earlier this month, gambling that victory would ease the growing
political pressure on his ruling coalition.
A negotiating team from the "troika" of creditors from the European
Commission, IMF and European Central Bank, had been due to resume
talks in Athens next month to wind up the 240 billion euro ($290
billion) bailout and agree an interim, post-bailout program.
In a bid to reassure international partners, Tsipras has sounded a
more moderate tone recently, promising to keep Greece in the euro
and negotiate an end to the bailout agreement rather than scrap it
unilaterally.
But he has stuck to his promise to reverse many of the tough
austerity measures imposed during the crisis, reversing cuts to the
minimum wage, freezing state layoffs and halting the sale of state
assets.
($1 = 0.8204 euros)
(Additional reporting by Angeliki Koutantou, George Georgiopoulos
and Deepa Babington; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Giles
Elgood)
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