About 27.05 per cent of Bulgarian voters will support Boiko Borissov’s Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) in the July 5 2009 national parliamentary elections, with 19.09 per cent voting for Sergei Stanishev’s Bulgarian Socialist Party-dominated Coalition for Bulgaria, Barometer Info agency said on July 3.
 
Ahmed Dogan’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms will get 12.14 per cent, according to the survey done between June 29 and July 2.
 
This represents a slight gain for the parties expected to take the largest shares of votes in the contest for the country’s 240-seat unicameral Parliament, the National Assembly.
 
It is well known that polls close to election days tend to see gains for major players as the electorate make up their minds and the margin of undecideds decreases.
 
In poll results announced on June 29, Barometer Info gave GERB 27 per cent, the Coalition for Bulgaria 18.5 per cent, Dogan’s MRF 12.5 per cent, ultra-nationalist Ataka 9.5 per cent, the centre-right Blue Coalition nine per cent. At the time, Barometer Info said that parties that could get more than six per cent, thus putting them over the four per cent threshold for entry to the National Assembly, included Yane Yanev’s centre-right Order Law and Justice (OLJ), Simeon Saxe-Coburg’s National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP) and the LIDER-New Time. This would mean a Parliament with eight parties
 
Poll results released by Barometer Info on June 22 gave GERB 26 per cent, the Coalition for Bulgaria 17 per cent, the MRF 13 per cent and Ataka nine per cent.
 
Meanwhile, several polls have forecast that turnout will be higher than in Bulgaria’s European Parliament elections in June 2009, and would be close to those in the national parliamentary elections in 2005.
 
The National Centre for Public Opinion Surveys said on July 3 that turnout would be 55 per cent.
 
With this turnout, Borissov’s GERB would get 29 to 32 per cent, the BSP 20 to 22 per cent, the MRF 13 to 14 per cent, Ataka nine to 11 per cent, the Blue Coalition eight to nine per cent, LIDER with New Time and the NMSP five to 5.5 per cent each and OLJ four per cent.
 
The pollsters said that as turnout increased, the chances of smaller parties to clear the threshold to enter Parliament diminished.