SOPHIA, Bulgaria
Polls closed in Bulgaria's seventh general election in three years on Sunday evening, with exit polls suggesting another win for former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov's conservative party.
Borisov's GERB is on course to
win 25-27% of the vote, followed by the reformist coalition PP-DB at
around 15% and the ultra-nationalist Vazrazhdane party at around 13%,
polls indicated.
According to an exit poll
by Alpha Research, GERB is likely to get around 74 seats in the 240-seat
parliament, while PP could get 42 seats, and Revival 36 seats respectively.
Preliminary results are
expected on Monday.
Sunday's vote was called
after the seven groups elected in a June
vote did not succeed in forming a workable coalition.
Bulgaria has been run by
short-lived governments since 2020 when anti-graft protests helped to end
a coalition led by the GERB party.
Voter turnout was 38%.
Going into the election,
Borissov's center-right GERB party was tipped to finish first but was
seen as struggling to form a viable coalition amid a splintered
parliament.
Pollsters had predicted
that the main pro-Russia party, Vazrazhdane, had a good chance of
becoming the second-largest bloc in the legislature, but exit polls
suggest a weaker result.
Vazrazhdane wants Bulgaria to
lift sanctions on Russia over its invasion
of Ukraine and for the country to cease providing aid to
Kyiv, while also calling the country's NATO membership into question.
It has gained popularity since
proposing a Russian-inspired law banning LGBTQ "propaganda" that was
passed by a large majority in Parliament in August.
The We Continue the
Change/Democratic Bulgaria bloc, which seeks to bolster the country's position
in the EU, appears to have performed better than expected.
Bulgaria has been an EU member
since 2007, but is at risk of losing billions of euros in EU recovery
funds because of its lack of reforms.
It has yet to join the eurozone and
be fully integrated into the open-border Schengen zone.
Bulgaria is one of the poorest
and most corrupt nations in the EU and efforts to combat graft have been
largely stymied by a judiciary that is seen as often acting in the
interest of certain politicians.
The country has been in a
period of political instability since 2020, when Bulgarians across the country
took to the streets in protest at the takeover of state institutions by
oligarchs enabled by corrupt politicians.
That instability, along
with disinformation
coming from Moscow, has fostered the popularity
of pro-Russian and far-right groups in the former Soviet satellite state.
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