In July 2015, Antonis Samaras resigned as leader of New Democracy following the 'No' vote in the bailout referendum. Meimarakis took over from Samaras as an interim leader. In this capacity he led the party into the snap election on 20 September 2015, at which New Democracy were defeated for a second time in nine months by SYRIZA. Meimarakis did however succeed in slightly increasing the ND vote share from 27.8% to 28.1%. Despite this, their seat tally dropped from 76 to 75.