The sole significant uncertainty about Bulgaria’s July 5 national parliamentary elections is not which parties will get the largest share of votes, but about how a governing coalition will be made up.

Opinion polls in the final days before the elections said that Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov’s party, the Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (known by its Bulgarian abbreviation as GERB) will win the largest share of seats. However, a key question is whether the right-wing Blue Coalition will get enough votes for GERB to form a coalition government with it and with the help of some other minor right-wing and centre-right parties.

All pollsters agree that GERB holds a 10 per cent lead over the senior partner in the current ruling coalition, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and that three parties will fight to the last minute to make it to Parliament.

Predicting that four million of Bulgaria’s 6.8 million eligible voters will go to the polls, Sova Harris agency said on June 30 that 33.7 per cent would vote for GERB while the BSP-dominated Coalition for Bulgaria would get 24.6 per cent.

Ahmed Dogan’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), the party supported mainly by Bulgarians of Turkish ethnicity and a partner in the ruling coalition, was set for 12 per cent. The MRF’s bitter foe, Volen Siderov’s ultra-nationalist Ataka party, would get 9.2 per cent while the Blue Coalition was set for seven per cent.

According to the survey, the coalition of LIDER with New Time would get five per cent, while the other anti-MRF orientated party, Yane Yanev’s Order Law and Justice (OLJ) was set to get 4.5 per cent of the votes.

The threshold for parties and coalitions to get into Parliament is four per cent. The Sova Harris survey put the third ruling coalition partner, Simeon Saxe-Coburg’s National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP) under the threshold with 2.8 per cent.

The NMSP, however, was the surprise at the June 7 elections for European Parliament, when the party got not one but two seats, disproving predictions of its eclipse.
In an interview with mass-circulation daily 24 Chassa, Sova Harris’s Vassil Tonchev said that, based on these figures, it would be possible for a right-wing coalition government to be formed, one that would hold a slim majority in Bulgaria’s 240-seat unicameral Parliament.

The main factor that would affect the outcome of the elections continues to be voter turnout. Judging from previous elections, the biggest loser from a high turnout would be the MRF, which can rely on a disciplined hard core of supporters, further motivated by fiery anti-MRF rhetoric by OLJ and Ataka in the last week of the campaign. 

A high turnout would mean more votes distributed among the rest of the parties, while low turnout could make the MRF one of the three largest forces in Parliament after GERB and the BSP. 

On July 1, polling agency MBMD’s Petar Zhivkov told Nova Televisia that, according to their polls, GERB could get about 30 per cent of the votes with the BSP coming second with 20 per cent. The MRF was third with 12 to 14 per cent, depending on turnout. Fourth was Ataka, followed by the Blue Coalition. Unlike Sova Harris, the MBMD survey said that the NMSP could make it to Parliament while LIDER-New Time coalition and OLJ were not certain of getting over the four per cent threshold.  

An Alfa Research survey also saw the NMSP in Parliament, together with GERB, the BSP, the MRF, Ataka and the Blue Coalition with LIDER-New Time and OLJ uncertain and depending on turnout.