Bulgaria municipal elections (27 Oct - 3 Nov 2019)

[Beagle]

Okay, so in about a week's time Bulgarians will go to the polls and decide the fate of:

- 264 municipal mayors - there are 265 municipalities as of 2015, but only the cross-endorsed incumbent filed in one of the communities on the border with Greece. The municipal mayor is a fairly strong figure and certainly the most noticeable, so perhaps understandably most of the media attention is focused on these elections, especially for those in the 27 major cities that are the centers of oblasts.

- 265 municipal councils – the smallest municipalities have 11 council members, Sofia has 61, the rest come somewhere in between. There is no threshold as such, the valid votes are divided by the number of seats in the municipality in order to come up with the electoral quota, after which the seats are distributed among the parties above the quota using Hare-Niemeyer. This means that in the smallest municipality (1100 permanent residents) about 50 votes are enough to get in the council, while parties with just over 1.5% support can and do get in the Sofia Municipal Council.

- some 2500+ mayors of mayoralities – if you don’t live in a municipal center, you get to choose the mayor of your town or village. In practical terms these mayors wield almost no executive power, their function is mostly administrative, but they are instrumental to the building of local party powerbases. Like Mantis has written before, it has always been a bone of contention between the left and the right how big a place has to be before it gets to choose its own mayor. For 2015 the bar is set at the lowest it has ever been - 100 permanent residents (not current residents, nor voters). As a result, in at least one village where only one of the 104 official inhabitants does not live in Turkey (well, she and her ex-husband, but he’s not registered to vote there), the mayor will elect and then govern herself. In many other villages there simply is no suitable building to place a ballot box, not to mention that there need to be at least 5 poll workers from at least 4 parliamentary parties… but that latter rule is often ignored anyway. About 200 mayoralties will be uncontested, about 4/5ths of those have already been won by the DPS, most of the rest – by GERB.

- district mayors in 24 districts of Sofia, 6 of Plovdiv and 5 of Varna – these mayors are virtually powerless, they serve mostly as figureheads. They will be elected directly again after GERB had made them appointees in the previous term.

- the e-voting referendum: “Should it also be possible to vote remotely through electronic means?” [paraphrasing a bit]. I may discuss the referendum in another post if I have the time, at this point suffice it to say that it is certain to pass (73% Yes/13% No per polls), but also certain to fall under the participation threshold which would make it binding.

Runoffs for mayorships where no candidate got over 50% will be held on November 1st.

Now given that these are a) local elections and b) in Bulgaria, I should be talking about the all-prevailing sleaziness and venality, but fear not! We have finally found our savior:



No? Okay, moving on.

This election marks the first and probably only time the council elections will be almost completely open list. Parliament likely didn’t realize the implications of their amendment of the electoral code until it was too late, but now just 7% of the electoral quota (and not the party voters) in the municipality are needed in order to rearrange the list ranking.  Candidates who are selected by more than 7% are elected (in order of total number of votes) first and only then is the party ordering used. The top candidate is protected by having all ballots without a preference count for him/her, but from then on it is going to be a battle between the list-mates. In the example above, this would mean that 6 preferential votes would be enough to place you second on your party list in the smallest municipality. To prevent this, some parties are no longer running full lists but just the number who are realistically with a chance to get in. It also means that certain lucky individuals, whose number in the lists matches the number of their party in the ballot, are virtually certain to be elected because too many people tick the same number both for party and preference “just to make sure” – the so called 15/15 phenomenon by which an unknown pol sci grad student overtook the BSP leader & Party of European Socialists President in the EU Parliament elections.

In the next post I will discuss the state of the parties and the campaign – to the extent there has been one.

[DavidB.]

Fascinating post, Beagle, thanks for this. What do turnout figures in Bulgarian municipal elections generally look like?

[Beagle]

Okay, here is the outcome of the last municipal elections (municipal mayors):


GERB / ГЕРБ [Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria]– light-bluish-gray (2011:  85*) – the party of power is looking to score their 10th election victory in a row and look certain to do so, the only question is by how much. Their stated goal is to have 100 mayors and keep control of the 8 largest cities, which certainly seems achievable. Whether they achieve a net gain in councilors is too hard to call. There are rumors that these elections will serve as a gauge for Borisov to decide if he’s running for president next year – and if he does so, it’s likely that Parliament elections will be called at the same time to try and take advantage of his personal popularity for GERB. Of course, both Ponta and Fico had higher personal ratings when they ran for president than Borisov and still lost, so this could backfire quite badly.

* between the party switches, the “independents in name only” and by-elections, they controlled over 100 municipalities at one point, but after a few incumbents left/were deselected just before the elections, they are defending around 95)

BSP / БСП [Bulgarian Socialist Party] – red (2011: 51) – with hindsight, the 2011 election was actually good for the BSP – buoyed by the better than expected performance of the presidential candidate and by appearing as the only credible opposition to GERB, they managed to score a few notable gains, especially in the second round (arguably in places they should have never lost in the first place, but still…) They would love to have a loss like 2011, but it’s far more likely that they are heading for a drubbing. Their pivot to their core voters (trying to out-Ataka Ataka at times) appears to have failed – it might have worked better if Mikov, the party leader, wasn’t undermined by the party bosses and other figures at every step, but even then I would like to think that the nostalgia for Communism is no longer a viable strategy. It may be internecine warfare or the sign of a deeper shift, but the BSP seems to have been sabotaged from within. In any case, 20 years ago almost to the day the BSP won 198/255 municipalities, now it appears possible that they will be down to 10% of that.

DPS/ДПС [Movement for Rights and Freedoms] – purple (2011: 34) – the MRF are secure in their Turkish/Roma strongholds, so they are free to play the long game – to position themselves as GERB partners in this parliament and possibly the next one. For that purpose their media conglomerate is becoming obsequious in their coverage of GERB. In some regions this campaign is more successful than others – for example GERB deselected a few incumbents in favor of MRF favored people around Varna. Of course, what most people are watching is if the MRF march into the Bulgarian countryside will continue now they are (formally) in opposition and (should be) out of control of the local police – if the Parliamentary elections are any guide, they stand to gain at least 10 municipalities with more than 2/3rds Bulgarian majority. While up to 2011 they used to hide themselves behind other parties in Bulgarian municipalities – at least 3 of the victories of current RB parties in the rural Northwest of the country came because they were serving as stand-ins for the DPS – they will run under their own banner virtually everywhere this time around.

Various coalitions – pink (2011: 38): Since GERB don’t really do coalitions, these are mostly either the “old Right” coalescing together, in other words the RB (~20) , or left-wing coalitions with the BSP at least supporting them in the second round (~8).

Independents – gray (2011: 33): the only independent who won without at least the tacit support of GERB, BSP and/or DPS (or all three together) is the RB-supported incumbent in Petrich. No “true” independents are going to be elected this time around as well.

RB/РБ [Reformist Block] – dark blue (2011: 1+1 elected for GERB, but see above re: the coalitions & the MRF): rather surprisingly, the RB has not split yet and are running together in about 200 of the municipalities. Even it they weren’t hampered by the infighting and the bad blood between the various parties and people within the Block, their campaign would still suffer from the obvious problem: virtually everywhere they are competitive, they are running against their bigger coalition partner in government - GERB. When you are running on the corruption and incompetence of the incumbents, it is difficult to explain how and why once you are elected you will form a majority in the municipal council with the same corrupt and incompetent people. Still, the RB is probably going to score some gains, if only in comparison with the election of 2011, which was a disaster for the “old Right”.

IMRO & NFSB / ВМРО & НФСБ [Patriotic Front]– brown (2011: 1) the erstwhile soft-nationalist Patriotic Front has split for these elections. Back in January it appeared possible that not only would they appear together, but they would also establish a broad cooperation with the RB, running joint candidates for mayor in most major cities, which would have created a plausible non-BSP alternative to GERB. These plans obviously did not come to fruition except in 2 or 3 places. The two main parties in the PF are pursuing different strategies – the IMRO is going for the major cities, while the NFSB is attempting to establish a base in more rural communities outside their southeastern strongholds. The IMRO has released the only publicly available polling so far, see below. Both parties are also in an awkward position, simultaneously trying to criticize the government while downplaying their support of it, but taking credit for a couple of reforms. The IMRO has taken a more confrontational course, while NFSB is generally trying to be more cooperative with GERB.

Ataka/Атака [Attack]– fascist brown - (2011: 0) – for various reasons Attack has always been irrelevant in local elections and this will not change now with their Putinist turn.

ABV/АБВ [Alternative for Bulgarian Revival] – color: N/A - (2011: 1 – elected for GERB) – the partners in the law office where I work are laundering money uh, ‘bundlers’ for ABV, so it would be difficult for me to be objective. In general, though, they are probably exerting the most effort in this election because they know they are doomed if they don’t establish a local power base. To this effect they are running mostly former BSP mayors/candidates, but also GERB people, local barons and mafia godfathers... – in short, anybody and any coalition that can possibly get them into the municipal council. They stand a reasonable chance of getting several municipal mayors, but their number will certainly be in the single figures, they'll mostly be looking for councilors.

NDSV/НДСВ [National Movement for Stability and Progress] – yellow (2011:5) – the Simeon party is in its death throes, the few remaining outposts they have now were held in 2011 only by the personal vote of the incumbents. Not one of those incumbents is running for NDSV exclusively this time around, 2 have dropped the party altogether and one is retiring.

BDC/БДЦ [Bulgarian Democratic Center] – cyan (2011:1+1 elected for RZS) – the party formerly known as Lider is going to continue to rule their feudal fiefs because the serfs need their jobs. Everywhere else they are not a factor.

Likewise, the remainder – the “Popular Union” - the non-Lider remainder of the Bulgaria without Censorship coalition (2011:3); the various social democratic parties** (5); the Astroturf “Greens” (1); RZS (2); the agriculturalists (2), etc. will serve their usual role of vehicles for local oligarchs and may get one or two mayors and a couple of councilors here and there, but it would serve no purpose to describe them in detail.

** Fun (?) fact: the 4 parties in the lower left corner of the graphic above, are, respectively: Bulgarian Social Democrats, Bulgarian Social Democracy, Political Movement Social Democrats and the Judean People’s… Bulgarian Social Democratic Party.

I don’t think any individual race will be of any interest, so I’m not going into further detail. I will just show you a couple of posters that in many ways are representative of the choice many Bulgarians feel they have in these elections:


GERB – quick, try to guess what line of business this gentleman is in!



BSP


Note: these are not candidates in the same election

Given this choice and the lackluster campaign, it is expected that turnout will be very low, possibly dipping below 35%. All the major parties seem to think this will be to their benefit – GERB because by now they have established a machine almost everywhere except in the MRF areas, BSP because their core voters used to be loyal to the bone and the MRF because this increases the influence of the bought votes.

Polling: Search parties are under way for the missing Bulgarian pollsters. They all seem to have vanished sometime in July-August (well, one is supposedly running for Sofia mayor for the BSP, but not much has been heard from him), and no credible polling has been published since then. In all seriousness, as GERB doesn’t want anything to challenge the narrative that their victories in the major cities are preordained and as none of the other parties sees much to brag about in their polling, none of the private polls have been released. The only publicly available polling is by an outfit that published polls in 2007 based on the meticulous methodology of setting up ballot boxes at public transport stops and letting anyone vote. This time they are supposed to have conducted interviews, according to which the GERB incumbents are in great shape in the 5 cities of interest… unless they have to contend with the IMRO challengers in the second round. In other news, paper is made of trees. From what I have heard of private polling, the BSP are looking at a loss of 2-4 of the currently held 6 major cities (all to GERB) and possibly not even making the run-off in any of the cities with population over 100k, while there will be little change elsewhere.

[Beagle]

Runoffs were held yesterday, so here are my observations - originally i had typed "a few quick observations", ha-ha, yeah right.

- As expected, the election was a triumph for GERB, but I will discuss this in a bit more detail below.

- I was completely wrong about the predicted turnout - in the end it was a more than respectable* 53.6% for the locals / 39.67% for the referendum (DPS, Attack and ((to an extent)) the BSP boycotted). Turnout was poor in the big cities (41% in Sofia in the first round, 16% for the district runoffs in the second) though, so this was probably observer bias 
* More than respectable for Bulgaria where due to the outdated voting lists the actual turnout runs about 10% higher than the official one

- quite a few successful mayors reached unprecedented levels of support (70%+) that were last seen during the communist era. The GERB wave probably helped a lot, but there were a few represenatives of other parties who also managed that feat - and I'm not counting the local oligarch candidates in their number

- at the same time, vote splitting also reached unprecedented levels, with a lot of mayors running 20%+ ahead of their municipal councilor slates. This might have something to do with the below fact...

- this election exposed in very stark detail the breathtaking level of illiteracy/innumeracy of a)the voters and b) the poll workers. While the 14% figure of invalid votes for municipal councils is not particularly alarming in itself, it reached up to 40% in some places. The much simpler ballots for mayors flummoxed only about 5% of the voters. And while Sofia has the best educated population in the country, it is also the best paid, which might explain why the people who worked the polls for about 25€ were not particularly competent. Almost every protocol was submitted with errors requiring a partial or a complete recount and there were only 19 people to verify the submission of all 1440 precincts. As a result around 5000 poll workers were locked in the sports arena where the submission took place for up to 48 hours

- vote buying wasn't particularly rampant (well, comparatively). Much more influential was the controlled vote - the municipality is the main (and on occasion - the only) employer in many rural communities, so the incumbents obviously benefited from the votes of their subordinates and their families

As to numbers, the headline figure is the result for the oblast cities - although these municipalities have no more power than any other, these are the major Bulgarian cities where about 55% of the population of the country lives.

GERB: 21 (+4) - won 6 from the BSP, 1 from the RB
RB: 3 (+1) - won 2 from GERB
GERB/RB joint candidate: 1 (-)
DPS: 1 (-)
BSP: 0 (-6)
Independent*: 1 (+1)

* the incumbent mayor of Pazardzhik, originally elected from the current RB parties and tacitly supported by GERB in 2011, has become a law unto himself despite some really sordid scandals (including a murder). He is supported by a particular faction of the DPS, but I guess I was wrong about no "true" independents being elected this time around

Apparently Bulgaria now has about 6-700 municipalities instead of the actual 265, going by the number of wins the parties are claiming as their own - success has many fathers etc. I will be working out the actual numbers in the days to come (and would like to make a map of the  winners - ie distribute the various "independents" and minor party candidates in their respective camps), but no promises as to if and when I will post this here. A few words about the major parties:

GERB - the party of power consolidated its win by presenting themselves as gatekeepers for the EU funds, which is the major source of all infrastructure spending in Bulgarian municipalities. Their projected vote share was about 33% (+2 compared to the 2014 parliamentary election)

BSP - as I wrote earlier, the BSP has pivoted to its core voters, which might be part of the reason why the turnout has not been as bad as expected, especially in rural communities. They actually have scored a few gains in small municipalities, but the combined total population of those does not equal even the smallest city they have lost. And obviously their urban vote has collapsed calamitously, resulting in a clean sweep for GERB even in the red strongholds that had never fallen since the communist takeover in 1944. Projected vote share - 13% (-2)

DPS - contrary to some expectations, the DPS has underperformed in these elections, even suffering a net loss in municipal mayors. Their attempt to expand into Bulgarian majority areas has been almost entirely unsuccessful and they even lost some of the rock solid Turkish vote (but have compensated by an even more effective stranglehold on the Roma votes). Some talking heads think that this was actually part of their plan all along - supposedly they didn't want to get the 2nd place as to not stir up anger in the Bulgarian population, and so to paint themselves as more suitable GERB partners - but I don't necessarily agree. The DPS definitely worked for GERB in the runoffs, though. Projected vote share - 11% (-2)

RB - I think it's fair to say the RB has done better than many expected, even though they also lost several long term incumbents. The parties within the Bloc that are more cooperative with GERB had much better results overall, but all the RB gains have come at GERB's expense (though this is also indicative of the support that GERB gave to their coalition partners in RB/BSP runoffs). This probably explains why Borisov lambasted the RB in his presser yesterday - but the coalition will likely hold without change. Projected vote share - 9% (-).

If there is any interest in any of the other parties - or in any other issues - I will respond, though it may take some time due to work pressure.

[Ex-Assemblyman Steelers]

Thank you Beagle.  But i must ask you something,  do you have any social-democratic party in Bulgaria?

[Beagle]

Thank you Beagle.  But i must ask you something,  do you have any social-democratic party in Bulgaria?

Not convinced by the Bulgarian Social Democrats, Bulgarian Social Democracy, Political Movement Social Democrats and the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party, I see. Okay, obviously you were waiting for the new 2015 entry United Social Democracy - not that it united any of the parties above! Or maybe you like the Social Democratic Party(which is a completely different entity from the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party). Or the Movement for Social Humanism, or the United Bloc of Labour : Bulgarian Labourists? These are all parties that collected at least 3000 signatures and ran in the 2015 elections.

Mind you, the social democrats have nothing on the extreme left - I think something like 30 out of the 72 parties registered for the election placed somewhere on that spectrum, if you count Attack and its offshoots.

So yes, there are some social democratic parties. Now, social democratic voters, on the other hand... those actually mostly vote for Movement 21. They got ~2% of the national vote this time around.

(look, I can write a very serious ((and unbearably tedious)) post about the presence or absence of Social democracy in Bulgaria, but somehow I doubt that this will be the most productive hour, two or three of my life)

Anyhow, if maps are what you are looking for, the Dnevnik website has an okay infographic. This link takes you to the 2015 mayoral results. The link for 2011 in the upper left corner takes you to the 2011... municipal council results. There's also a link for the 2015 municipal council results (2015:общински съвети) if you want to compare apples to apples, but I find those results incredibly uninstructive for three main reasons:
- the map makes no distinction between a bare plurality (as low as just 3 out of the 13 seats in one case) and a council where GERB has completely shutout their opponents and will have a single party rule for the next 4 years. Not to mention that in the few municipalities where the two top parties will have the same number seats, this draw is not indicated at all.
- there is no indication of the mayor who has been elected in the municipality (for 2011 there is a small circle where the mayor is from a different party to the one with the most councilors). The mayor will have a much more significant influence, as councilors are generally very flexible and switch parties often.
- they follow some arbitrary rules for assigning colors in cases of coalition - the GERB-RB local coalitions are either grey for others or light blue for GERB, the RB-IMRO coalitions are all colored RB even when the IMRO has a more significant presence, etc.

Oh, and one more thing I forgot to mention in the previous post: as expected, all parties are now angry that their careful arrangement of the running order of the councilor slates has been thrown into disarray by the preferences of the voters. It is wonderful

[Ex-Assemblyman Steelers]

I must be more ironic. Your posts are remarkable. Thank you again.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

So what was the deal with "bulgaria without censorship" anyway? It always struck me as somewhat weird.

[Beagle]

To the delight of (in no particular order) Bulgarian road repairmen, vote salesmen, ad agencies and Roma ghetto dwellers local elections have rolled around. Not much has changed from the election 4 years ago, so I am reusing the thread - it will also save me a lot of typing I don't have the time for. I think between the thread for the 2011 election and this one, pretty much all procedural questions are answered, but I'd be glad to answer any further ones you may have.

This is the picture after the 2015 election (no subsequent changes are reflected):



Note, this is my own work and bound to have a mistake or two, plus there are some debatable decisions, such as designating a few ostensible 'Old Right' mayors in the Northwest as DPS (which is the party that actually got them elected, even if they didn't appear on the ballot paper). The main advantage of this map, however, is that I have tried to color the various independents-in-name-only, coalition candidates, cross-endorsees etc. with their actual affiliations.

A few general observations before moving to the state of the parties:
- there are now 266 municipalities, the threshold for election of a mayor of a mayorality has been raised to 350 permanent inhabitants.
- the number of mayoral candidates has shrunk substantially, even when taking into account that fewer elections will take place. The number of municipalities where the incumbent is the only candidate has increased from 2 to 10, while some 320 village mayors are also as good as elected*.
Dozens of municipalities will see a straight GERB-BSP fight (or DPS-GERB in the Turkish areas). There seems to be an increased tolerance of alliances where GERB and BSP endorse the same candidate (even if this happened a lot unofficially in 2011 and 2015).
- perhaps as a consequence, public polling has been very scarce (and there were some shocking methodology choices in what little polling has been published). With the exception of Sofia and Plovdiv, virtually all regional (oblast) capitals have seen either one or no reputable polls published, not to speak of smaller towns. There are certain media driven narratives about the momentum during the campaign, perhaps based on internal polling, but for the most part it is anyone's guess how the election will turn out in most of Bulgaria.
- the randos who got elected in 2015 because their number on the party list matched the party's number on the ballot proved to be a fickle bunch (with many switching parties) and to prevent this, the preference votes are now numbered starting with 100.

* The ballot paper will also have the option "I don't support any candidate", but even if this option has a majority, there will be no effect whatsoever

GERB - after increasing the municipalities under their control by (at least) 50% in three elections in a row, GERB are widely considered to have hit their ceiling. Having expelled his second in command earlier in the year, PM Boyko Borisov purged a few loyalists of his former closest associate. Since this associate was considered to be the muscle behind the party organization, a lot of people are expecting that some of the GERB gains will evaporate. Still, the incumbent mayor always has an advantage and GERB has more than half of those running. If they lose Sofia and Plovdiv though, which is not implausible, this will widely be seen as the beginning of the end for Borisov, even if GERB keep control of the plurality of municipalities and most regional capitals, as they almost certainly will. Conversely, if GERB manage to keep their losses of regional capitals to 1-3 and retain Bulgaria's two largest cities, their position as party of power will be confirmed at least until the 2021 election for parliament.

BSP - the Socialist party is looking to bounce back from a historic defeat in 2015 and at the very least regain a foothold in the regional capitals, where they were shut out last time around. There is no question that there will be an increase in 'red' municipalities and councilors. It will not be considered a success, however, if the gains are confined to the rural municipalities with aging population where the BSP should never have lost. Several of the local party organizations are in an outright war with party leader Ninova. The party, which succeeded to the Communist party infrastructure 30 years ago and thus had organizers in every settlement, is now not even running candidates or is supporting independents in almost 25% of Bulgarian municipalities. Yet their position as the default anti-GERB choice and a few fresh faces should give them hope. And if the BSP-affiliated candidate wins 'blue' Sofia for the first time in 30 years, this will be a victory of historic proportions.

DPS - the DPS (or Movement for Rights and Freedoms) has tried for a long time to shed their image as the Turkish party (or the Turkish and Roma party) with no particular success. And yet they will expand further in the poorest areas of the country, regardless of the ethnicity of the population, and probably lose some of their councilors in the largest cities. As they have successfully fended off the challenge from DOST (with some of the defectors being forced to emigrate to Turkey) and have established a symbiotic relationship with GERB, chances are they will have a good election. The DPS dissidents have either returned to the fold or have little chance of reelection.

Miscellaneous - as can be surmised, this is an eclectic bunch, ranging from the sole far-left party mayor to numerous representatives of parties that don't really exist on a national basis - such as the Bulgarian Social Democrats and Bulgarian Social Democracy** and Bulgarian Social Democratic Party - to the mayor of Pazardzhik who won as an independent against candidates from all parliamentary parties (but with the support of factions from all parties). In virtually all cases, these are representatives of a local oligarch or two that have a large enough clientelistic network to not need to pay lip service to Borisov/Ninova or another party leader - or in a few cases, like Pazardzhik, the mayor is the oligarch himself. Of course, this is not to say that GERB/BSP et al. are not running oligarch-selected candidates.
 
** The Bulgarian Social Democrats won a court case, so the other party is now called just Social Democracy

Old Right - with the parties that descended from the old SDS (Union of Democratic Forces) and the subsequent Reformist Bloc hopelessly splintered, several of the incumbent mayors have either been co opted by GERB or browbeaten into retirement. The rump SDS has attached themselves to GERB. Democratic Bulgaria somewhat defied expectations by winning a seat in the EU parliament earlier this year, receiving more than 50% of their total vote in Sofia alone. Given that they have just one incumbent, who is running while under indictment, they have given up on all pretense of running a national campaign - running local lawyers without providing them with any resources in just a quarter of all municipalities. All effort is put in the Sofia election, where DB hope to be power brokers after the election. A further part of the erstwhile Reformist Bloc is providing cover from the right for the BSP-affiiliated candidate in Sofia.

Nationalists - much to no one's surprise, the United Patriots coalition, which is GERB's formal coalition partner in government, has fallen apart (but no party has formally entered opposition). Therefore, it is necessary to consider each of the main parties in this section on its own:
VMRO are the ascendant party, as a result of having won 7.3% and two seats in the European elections (with all three other parties hovering just above 1%), having the most popular and prominent leader by far and by spending the most money. If the nationalists achieve their long-sought breakthrough in local government, VMRO will be the largest beneficiary - in 3 of the regional capitals they are reportedly in a position where they can potentially enter the run-offs and if they do, they should channel all opposition to GERB.
NFSB concentrate on smaller municipalities, although the candidate in Plovdiv, where the nationalists are probably slightly favored, is nominated by them.
Ataka (Attack) are trolling, as per usual, but it is noteworthy that Volen Siderov has resigned from parliament to seek a seat on the Sofia municipal council.
Vuzrazhdane (Revival) - the party for people who think Ataka is too soft, conciliatory and 'pro-GERB/EU' will likely place second in Varna, qualifying for the run-off if there is one. There is zero chance that they win, of course, but others have used the Varna run-off as a springboard before.

GERB are strongly favored to win at least half of the 28 regional (oblast) capitals, but most eyes are on whether they will keep hold of Sofia and Plovdiv. Again, if you are interested in the race for any individual city, town or village, feel free to ask.

[bigic]

According to the exit polls, there will be a GERB/BSP second round in Sofia. The independent candidate Bonev has a surprisingly good result.

[Beagle]

According to the exit polls, there will be a GERB/BSP second round in Sofia. The independent candidate Bonev has a surprisingly good result.

Quite so. Bonev, who is 31 years old and the leader of a good governance civic organization, was the major surprise with his 10% share. I doubt many people read his 300-page platform, but it definitely gave him the image of somebody who is proposing specific solutions instead of speaking in the platitudes and cliches of all other candidates. He and his young team are also social media savvy and apparently quite popular on instagram. With the usual caveats of the small sample size of the exit polls, Bonev was either 2nd or a very close 3rd among 18-30 year olds. There is a lot of debate whether Bonev voters should be considered part of the general 'Old Right' vote, as the targeting and messaging were quite similar between the two groups, but while there is undoubtedly some overlap, most of the Bonev supporters were either first time voters (or general non-voters); progressives, who vote for the Old Right because there is no sane/non-corrupt alternative; or people who are disgusted with parties in general and wouldn't vote for for a party candidate or list...

...and therein lies the problem. Bonev also ran as an independent candidate for municipal council, but  I assume he never anticipated that he'd be that successful. The number of his votes for Mayor and for municipal council is almost identical (just 5000 votes less for council, but due to the invalid votes, the proportion is also the same). So while he easily passes the electoral quota, the rest of his votes are wasted. Bonev squeezed out all minor parties that made up a significant part of the previous council - there are 13 (!) party lists that got enough votes for at least half a quota but not enough get an entire one. So there will be just 5 party lists represented on the Sofia municipal council (GERB, BSP, DB and VMRO, and Attack who barely snuck in with Siderov. However, as the 7 council seats that Bonev qualified for have to be redistributed somehow, the parties get 'unearned' councilors. So now GERB and VMRO together have a majority on the municipal council due to the 3 seats they received from the redistribution of Bonev's seats; a majority on the basis of just 35% of the valid votes - it is not just FPTP that can produce such results. It is particularly galling that due to the redistribution, Attack, with just 1,88% of the vote, will likely get a second council member - essentially nullifying Bonev, as they stand against everything he espouses.

As to the mayoral run-off in Sofia, the incumbent mayor probably has a slight advantage, but we'll get there when we get there.

[Beagle]

As usual, if you sum up the number of mayors the parties claim as their own after the elections, you will end up with approximately 500 municipalities, as opposed to 266 in reality. But here are the estimated results and numbers of the 2019 municipal election (took me some time to work them out):

GERB ≈ 138 mayors of municipalities (+8, but see below)
Mayors of oblast (regional) capitals - 16 (-6), however you may also add the 2 GERB/Old Right joint candidates (+1)

The ruling party have every reason to feel good about the outcome of the election:
- GERB retained Sofia and Plovdiv, the latter quite comfortably in the end, thus keeping control of all 5 largest cities in the country;
- absolutely no alternative to their hold on power has emerged either from the left or from the right;
- while some of their losses stung, the vast majority were either incumbents close to the ousted former 2nd-in-command or open seats where the incumbents were deselected due to their ties with him. Virtually all the losers were also cartoonishly corrupt, which helps the image of the party somewhat;
- they can brag about increasing the number of mayors and councilors again, which is technically true. However the net gain is entirely due to 3 factors:
   * the co-option of incumbent mayors (mostly from the Old Right);
   * the stronger than expected result of DPS, who qualified for quite a few run-offs in Bulgarian majority municipalities, resulting in everybody uniting behind the GERB candidate in the 2nd round;
   * the dozen or so municipalities where there was a joint GERB-BSP candidate - in almost all cases the mayor is GERB-aligned;

The flies in the ointment are the unexpectedly close result in Sofia and the increased dependence on DPS, who, as I had previously mentioned, tend to destroy their coalition partners at the next election.

BSP ≈ 48 mayors (-5)
Mayors of oblast (regional) capitals - 4 (+4)

The Socialists regained some lost ground in the cities, but continued their decline in the rural municipalities. Their voter base is dwindling by the day (due to their median age being in the 70s) and there is zero evidence that the distrust younger generations feel about the party is abating. The bright spots are the increase in the number of councilors and regional capital mayors, replenishing the exhausted BSP bench, and that they have kept the incumbent losses to a minimum.

DPS ≈ 43 mayors (+8)
Mayors of oblast (regional) capitals - 1 (-)

DPS had a great result, even if it flew a bit under the radar. In no small part due to their informal coalition with GERB, which lead to the security forces turning a blind eye to the vote buying and intimidation, DPS managed to:
  *  completely eradicate the threat from DOST or other split-offs, with just 1 of the DPS dissidents still holding on;
  *  substantially increase their inroads among the Roma and indigent Bulgarians, gaining almost a hundred councilors in municipalities with negligible Turkish population and becoming indispensable for the formation of municipal council majorities;
  *  in 2015 GERB made a play for votes in quite a few Turkish municipalities. Without exception, this time GERB was much more passive in those areas.

Miscellaneous ≈ 24 mayors (+3)
Mayors of oblast (regional) capitals - 2 (+1)

I didn't include the 2 mayors who were deselected by their parties, but ran and won as independents, or all the minor parties candidates who won thanks to an endorsement by GERB, BSP and/or DPS. The new mayor of the regional capital Yambol is a borderline case, as he is a local radio station owner who used his media to call a local referendum banning the settlement of refugees in Yambol during the crisis. He took advantage of the turmoil in local GERB (the deselected incumbent and the GERB nominee split the vote and both failed to make the run-off) and dispatched the BSP candidate with ease in the 2nd round. The new mayor happens to be the cousin of a DPS mayor, but as he steadfastly refuses to acknowledge receiving any support from DPS, he falls in this category.

Old Right ≈ 7 mayors (-7)
Mayors of oblast (regional) capitals - 3 (-)

The non-GERB parties of the nominal Right had a very tough election, although it was not as devastating as the numbers may appear, since many of their incumbents were reelected in coalition with GERB (and counted in the ruling party's number) and there were a handful of GERB gains where the nominee was proposed by their ally SDS. SDS also scored a gain in the regional capital Vidin against GERB, which offset the election of another incumbent for a GERB-Old Right coalition. Unlike SDS, Democratic Bulgaria has failed to maintain any presence in the rural municipalities (having less than 30 municipal councilors outside of the regional capitals). Still, DB are pleased with themselves because they more or less maintained the former Reformist Bloc's numbers in the councils in regional capitals without their ex coalition partners, and they had a decent result in Sofia, more about which anon. Still, neither SDS, with their abject surrender, nor DB, with their snarling opposition to GERB, are threatening the ruling party's dominance on the Right any time soon.

Nationalists ≈ 6 mayors (-)
Mayors of oblast (regional) capitals - 0 (-)

There is no other word to describe the result of the 4 parties of that spectrum than flop. VMRO were the heaviest spenders in mainstream media this campaign, but didn't manage to reach any run-offs in regional capitals, lost all their incumbents in small municipalities and after hyping their MEP, who ran for mayor of Sofia after leading the party list to an unprecedented 7% in May... and got less votes than in 2015. NFSB's candidate for Plovdiv mayor - who had previously been mayor from 2007 to 2011 and came within a thousand or so votes of winning the run-off in both 2011 and 2015 - barely scraped in the 2nd round and finished more than 15000 votes behind the GERB winner. Vuzrazhdane's leader made the run-off by a few hundred votes and got 36% of the vote in the second round, which wasn't much, considering he was endorsed by the local BSP organization. The losses were offset by gains, including a fairly prominent one, but these were all against cartoonishly corrupt incumbents where the other parties united behind the 'patriots' in the second round.

[Beagle]

Sofia saw a closer than usual mayoral contest, and while the candidate of the 'Old Right' and independent Boris Bonev (see above) both had respectable results, in reality only two ladies had a chance to be elected and govern the city and its budget of almost 1 billion €: incumbent Fandakova (GERB-SDS) and national ombudsman (and former BSP MP) Manolova - independent, who was endorsed by BSP, all the BSP splinter parties, a bunch of small center and center-right parties and several civic organizations. As Fandakova is inoffensive and, extraordinarily for a Bulgarian politician, not to mention a big city mayor, has a squeaky-clean reputation, while Manolova gained a lot of popularity for her work as ombudsman, this contest was viewed as a heavyweight bout between GERB and the joint opposition. Public polling had indicated a virtual tie at the start of the campaign, but gradually Sofia reverted to its center-right form and by election day it was clear that Fandakova was in the lead, but also that there was going to be a run-off, in which the 'Old Right' vote would be crucial - would they choose Fandakova, who is a close associate of Boyko Borisov and would be a continuation of the dreaded status quo, or go for change with Manolova, who, however, is tainted by her long career as Socialist parlamentarian and support of more than a few of the corrupt laws passed by parliaments between 2005 and 2014. Both candidates made a play for Democratic Bulgaria voters, with Fandakova making several promises to the party leaders, while Manolova strenuously avoided anything which would have linked her to the BSP. DB declared neutrality in the run-off. I can't tell how many of their voters went for either Fandakova or Manolova (I personally voted 'I don't support any candidate'), but it is pretty clear from the district mayor run-offs that all of them turned out. In the end, Fandakova won by 5%, which was significantly lower than both the public polling and the exit polls. Symbolically, she was held under 50% by the combined Manolova-NOTA vote.

After the district run-offs (which took place in a record 22 of Sofia's districts), the following picture emerged:



For completeness, here are the 2007 and 2015 results (GERB had abolished district elections in 2011):



For more detail about the districts, I will quote myself from almost two years ago:

The Greater Sofia municipality includes a lot of areas that can be charitably described as ‘exurbs’, but are, for the most part, fairly agricultural villages. For our purposes, the results in districts numbered 20-24 are irrelevant, except it may be worth mentioning that district 24 – the town of Bankya – is where Boyko Borisov is from and where he still resides.

District 17 is at the foothills of Vitosha mountain (it also includes a part of the mountain itself and a couple of villages). The urban part of the district is probably the wealthiest area in the city (and quite possibly - the country), it’s where several gated communities have sprung up and where a substantial part of the residential buildings are single family new builds. The residents here are mostly the ‘winners’ from the post-1989 changes.

The proximity to the mountain, among other things, also makes districts 2, 10 and 9 in the south of the city highly desirable. They saw a construction boom in recent years (multi-family-residentials only) and have suffered for it, as the infrastructure was built with far fewer inhabitants in mind, so they have a lot of gripes with the municipality.

District 8 (and the southwestern part of district 7) are also considered ‘tony’ neighborhoods, however while the districts listed so far are GERB-‘Old Right’ battlegrounds, here the BSP still has a presence. The reason is that this part of the city was the preserve of the ‘Red bourgeoisie’ - it was built up in the 60’s and 70’s as the place where the mid- to higher echelons of the Communist party would reside with their families (and also where most embassies are). However, like everywhere else in Sofia, the BSP has been in decline here.

District 16 is the ‘Student city’ and while student dormitories are no longer the only form of residential construction here, there are not many permanent residents. GERB generally wins pretty comfortably.

Districts 1, 4, and the part of 3 where I live form the core of the city center – it’s where virtually all institutions and tourist attractions are located and where most of the buildings pre-date 1960. While wealthier and better educated than most of the rest of the city as a whole – both indicators of higher performance for the RB and its predecessors – what gives the city center its character as the last ‘Old Right’ stronghold are the descendants of the pre-1944 elite, whose houses were nationalized after the Communist takeover and who got them restored due to the laws the UDF passed in the 1990s.

The remainder of district 3, alongside districts 11 and 12, are places where most of the residential construction took place in the 50’s and 60’s, so the residents skew older, which is consistent with the better BSP performance there – but under normal conditions GERB has no problem winning, as they dominate among people aged 30-59.

The remainder of district 7, districts 18, 14, 5 and 13 – in that order – are increasingly industrial, grimy and poor areas, where the residences tend to be high-rises mixed with pre-1960 one or two storey houses. GERB usually romps to victory here, as Borisov’s paternalistic/macho style is quite popular among the residents. However, it’s also where the nationalist and clientelist parties (such as RZS in 2005 and ‘Bulgaria without Censorship’ in 2014) find their best results.

District 15 – Lyulin – is the largest residential complex and a city within the city. It is not possible to put all its 150 000 residents under one common denominator. As the area with the most ‘first generation Sofians’, it tends to follow the national trends more closely than the rest of the city. GERB usually win here by a huge margin, but that’s because three or four other parties bunch up around the 10% mark.

District 19 – Mladost – is Lyulin’s counterpart in the southeast of the city and usually the two districts mirror their results. However, protests against the overbuilding of the neighborhood culminated in a landslide victory for an independent candidate (supported by the Greens and one other minor party) in the 2016 by-election for district mayor, after the previous mayor resigned on Borisov’s orders after being implicated in a conflict of interest.

I just need to point out a few peculiarities of the 2019 district mayor election:
- As can be seen, BSP voters overwhelmingly backed 'Old Right' mayors in the run-offs, so that 8 out the 10 DB candidates in run-offs won, even though only district 1 had DB in the lead after the 1st round. This was not reciprocated by the DB voters, so out of the 10 GERB-BSP run-offs, BSP-backed candidates won in only two - 8, where the ancestral Socialism is still alive (+ the BSP candidate was stellar and the GERB incumbent - mediocre) and 19, where the candidate of the civic coalition that won the special election back in 2016, endorsed by the BSP, defeated the Martha Coakley of Sofia politics;
- In district 17, the incumbent mayor, who ran for the Reformist Bloc (thus the 'Old Right') 4 years ago ran for GERB now, and due to his personal popularity and wealth weathered the DB assault. His colleague from district 2 similarly ran for GERB-SDS this time, but in an Old Right faction duel, he was beaten comprehensively in the run-off. The Reformist Bloc mayor in district 4 ran for the BSP, but was shut out of the run-off;
- District 23 was won by a genuine independent - since the mayor is a personal acquaintance, I can tell more, but in brief, he is the mayor of a village in the district, who had GERB's support in 2015 (but would have won the village even without it), who grew tired of the incompetent district administration and ran a maverick campaign;
- District 22 is not an 'Old Right' mayor from Democratic Bulgaria, but a SDS one, who ran as an independent and was cross-endorsed by GERB, DB and VMRO. She was one of only 2 district mayors who was not forced into a run-off, the other being the mayor of GERB home turf - district 24.