Analysts were expecting an indication of the result this morning with the full result clear later today. Polls suggest the race is too close to call.
What they do know - what cannot be hidden even by the eerie calm on the streets of Athens - is that in their epic struggle to remain in the single currency, this is a turning point.
The bombshell decision of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to hold a plebiscite over the terms of future financial assistance for the debt-stricken nation will determine the future of Greece within Europe, a future now hanging by a thread. And it threatens to open deep fissures that have lain hidden for generations, having first emerged in the violent aftermath of World War II - between Greece and Germany, and among Greeks themselves.
As tens of thousands attended competing 'yes' and 'no' rallies in the capital at the weekend, emotions were running high. For this is also a battle between the power of 'yes' and the power of 'no': Yes to Europe and its modernising effect; No to austerity, the levelling effects of tax increases and budget cuts and a life bereft of dignity.
The battle has entered every family, every home. In Parliament, in villages great and small, Greeks are openly harking back to the 1946-49 civil war, a conflict that took decades to overcome. To belong to the "yes" camp is to belong to the right; to belong to the "no" camp to belong to the left.
"By their very nature plebiscites are divisive," said Aristides Hatzis, associate professor of law and economics at Athens University. "But more people have been radicalised over the past week than ever before.
"What we now have is a great divide, a schism that will influence Greek politics for the next 20 years."
The streets of Athens were lined with placards depicting a defiant German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, under the words: "Five years he has been sucking your blood. Now tell him NO." Others declared: "We are writing history, we are saying NO."
The "no" camp may well be the irresistible force that meets the immovable object. Tsipras has repeatedly urged Greeks to reject the terms of proposals that, he says, amount to "blackmail" and "ultimatums" from the EU and International Monetary Fund. His radical left Syriza party is fully in control of the state and has a masterful propaganda machine.
Fury with Germany - the main contributor of Athens' 240 billion ($398 billion) bailout programme and the architect of the biting austerity that has been the price of such aid - is at an all-time high. After five months of ultimately fruitless negotiations between the leftist-led administration and international creditors, there are few who do not associate Berlin with the implacable demands that have left destruction in their wake.
Record levels of poverty and unemployment in an economy that has contracted by more than 25 per cent are blamed, squarely, on Germany. "These are our German brothers," said Giorgos Delezos as tourists traipsed by his gift shop. "These are the people who really won the war," he bellowed as his iPhone blared the rumbustious tones of Erika, the marching song beloved of Hitler's Waffen SS outside his shop. "This is why I will be voting 'no' all the way to the Reichstag."
The closure of banks, the sight of panic-stricken pensioners - many in tears as they queued for state handouts of a paltry 120 to get by - the food and drug shortages, the collapse of economic activity, have been quick to bolster the "yes" vote. Many fear that Greece is sleepwalking towards chaos.
The desire to say "no" to the excoriating policies that have been set as the price of Athens' place at the heart of Europe may be stalking the country, but natural "no" voters are moving in droves to the "yes" camp.
With their country skirting so close to the abyss that threatens to open with the reintroduction of the drachma, to do otherwise would be to court disaster.
"Tsipras constantly avoids saying what will happen if there is rupture," sighed Kostas Markopoulos, a young public relations consultant who voted for the radical leftists when they were catapulted into office in January. "There is no plan B. I don't believe Syriza understood the challenge in its entirety or the size of the consequences if things go wrong. It's made so many mistakes. I really don't think it would be able to handle the transition."
Those who stand to be hardest hit by a new round of austerity - including a proposed 23 per cent tax on restaurants - are also rallying to the "yes" camp amid fears that tourism, the engine of the Greek economy, will be damaged irreparably if a euro exit occurs. Last week saw mass cancellations by hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers.
"With a heavy heart I will vote 'yes' even if my own business will suffer terribly," said Photis Papathanasiou, who owns a chain of taverns in Plaka. "The alternative will kill our country."
- Observer
