🇧🇬 Bulgarian elections megathread (next up: European and National (?) Parliament 09 June 2024)

[Beagle]

Anyone have any information on this alliance that formed recently. Several of the parties tactical voted for or had aligned with the BSP, so why are they forming this alliance now? What is the full makeup and platform of this electoral alliance?

It's hopeless BSP splinters, who would be lucky to pass 2%, but I think even 1% might be a tough hurdle.

Why are they forming this alliance now? Because a businessman, who served as one of the last leaders of the Bulgarian Komsomol, got badly sick with Covid (which also made him a widower) and decided to sell up and fund a left of the BSP, nationalistic, socially conservative project. It is also a last bid for relevancy for virtually all of the politicians involved.

Make-up:

• a party around the aforementioned businessman. Major selling point: unreconstituted commie nostalgia. The face of their party is the disastrous 94-97 BSP leader/Prime minister;
• a Russophile party, created by the former editor of the BSP newspaper. Unlike others, he didn't turn renegade, but actually got thrown out when he was indicted for spying for Russia. Major selling point: making Bulgaria a Russian satrapy;
• a party around the 10 MPs who left the BSP group in the 2017-2021 parliament when Ninova got reelected party leader. Major selling point: anti-corruption the personal vote of the 10 former MPs (which amounted to 3,750 votes in April, many of them by confused DPS voters who ticked the adjacent box);
• Party of the Bulgarian Communists. Major selling point: take a wild guess;

Platform: In a word, albeit a newly coined one: Lukashenko-ism

In other news, the Blagoevgrad mayoralty was - predictably - won by ITN in a romp.

In other other news, Slavi Trifonov, who has again eschewed mainstream media appearances, held a Q&A session with students in which he kinda talked himself out of the running for the Prime Minister-ship. When asked about the position, he said that the next prime minister should be the polar opposite of Boyko Borisov and, when pressed to elaborate, listed several aspects, which, quote, would make one not feel ashamed when seeing the Bulgarian prime minister at some high-ranking summit:

Boyko M Borisov	Bulgaria's next Prime Minister	Slavi T Trifonov
Firefighting Department of the Interior Ministry Academy	Graduate of a prestigious university	National Academy of Music
Firefighting degree, PhD in physical and psychological firefighter training	Has thorough knowledge of economics, finance and/or law	Viola degree
Nope	Must be fluent in at least one major foreign language	Nuh-uh

etc. So for the first time in recent history, a major party enters the final stretch of the campaign without a prime ministerial candidate. In the personality based Bulgarian political system, this is a very unusual move.

[Flyersfan232]

What is the tsar doing these days and supporting this year?

[Beagle]

What is the tsar doing these days and supporting this year?

Mostly litigating the flurry of lawsuits he has filed against the Bulgarian state. After Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha's triumphal election win, "his" parliament passed a law giving him all the property that was once owned by the royal estate. GERB, in their first term, rescinded the transfer of property (with its estimated value in the low 9 figures) and he has been fighting - mostly losing - battles in the courts ever since.

As to his political support, he's really no longer a factor. He had been supporting the pitiful vestiges of his old party, but they failed to collect the required 3,500 signatures for the April election and didn't bother filing for the new one. I'm not aware of any endorsement or sign of support to anyone this year and doubt he even votes.

[Estrella]

Sorry for necromancing an old post...

The one exception was in 1997, but the country was in a humanitarian crisis and just back from the brink of civil war after the disastrous Videnov/BSP government

...but, um, how did Bulgaria even get to that point?

[Mike88]

Looking at the current polling, stalemate and another election are the likeliest outcomes, right?

[Beagle]

Sorry for necromancing an old post...

The one exception was in 1997, but the country was in a humanitarian crisis and just back from the brink of civil war after the disastrous Videnov/BSP government

...but, um, how did Bulgaria even get to that point?

It would take dozens of hours and pages to even scratch at the root causes, so I thought I'd describe a rather typical day of a rather typical Bulgarian at the nadir of the '94-'97 BSP government (late January 1997):

7:30AM: Start for work. Put on the windshield wipers. The wave of petty crime which has hit the country means that anything easily detachable/accessible* gets stolen overnight. Police does not care - the vast majority of them are on the make anyway to supplement their meager salaries. The special ops team are hired out to organized crime. А few months ago the BSP interior minister was forced to resign when he was filmed drinking with topless dancers when a few hours earlier three policemen had been shot by gangsters.
* not so easily too - I remember vividly how one morning my family discovered our Skoda 120L on the ground: somebody had stolen all 4 wheels overnight


7:45AM: Drive by humongous lines in front of bank offices. People have been lining up since 6 to make sure that there would be some cash for them to withdraw, because banks do often run out. 15 banks have gone bust or will go bust within 12 months - almost all were fly-by-night operations of, for and by Communist/Socialist operatives, which mostly used the same model:

• receive vast amounts as start-up capital from the state-owned banks
• provide loans at fixed interest with long grace periods to the right people (who, if nothing else, immediately change the levs to foreign currency)
• support the BSP's highly inflationary policies (they were elected, after all, on promising that the money printers will never go to sleep on their watch - and they don't)
• have the right people repay their loans with now devalued levs (if they bother repaying at all). Even when the base interest rate was 40%, they still came out ahead... but in November the base interest rate hit 380%. This interest rate is obviously murder for legitimate businesses requiring credit
• bail at the right time

Since those banks provided very generous deposit rates, they took the lifetime savings of at least 10% of the population when they went bust. It is scant consolation that the lifetime savings of pretty much everybody else would also become next to worthless due to hyperinflation.

8AM: Arrive at work - a state owned industrial behemoth, woefully inefficient, overstaffed (BSP had promised full employment) and with fossilized leadership, whose only skill is party loyalty. However, even if it was better run, the enterprise would never turn a profit: the responsible minister has made it clear to the leadership that they can only buy raw materials through certain intermediaries and sell the products through other intermediaries that will skim every penny possible. Both sets of intermediaries are controlled by the same person - usually BSP affiliate Multigroup.
** although the case could certainly be made that for a time the BSP was a Multigroup affiliate, not the other way around

10AM: Since it's payday - and fortunately your job still pays, unlike many other state-owned enterprises - consider exchanging the levs into a more stable currency. Then dismiss the thought, since by the time you get to exchange it, your monthly salary, which was worth $24 in the morning, may be worth $18. The national bank has long since run out of foreign currency reserves to prop up the lev and, with sovereign debt crisis looming, there are no forthcoming creditors. In a week or so, the minimum monthly wage will become the equivalent to $5, the minimum pension - $1.40.

1PM: stealGet fuel from the company gas station. The few gas stations that have fuel available for normal people are besieged by huge lines, moving at glacial pace because the drivers push their cars to conserve the precious fuel. The country's only*** oil refinery is receiving irregular supplies, since the dollars that were earmarked for the oil purchases got stolen somewhere along the crony network. The government has released the wartime fuel reserves, but they're impossible to get at if you're not well connected.
*** there was a second one, but it got asset stripped by the PM's 'circle of friends' and is out of business


4PM: As soon as possible, go get food for the month. Inflation will hit 400% for the month, there will be occasions when stores will increase prices three times in a day. Not there is much food to be gotten, though:

• Bread, the chief staple food of Bulgaria, has been scarce since the autumn. Almost all the domestic wheat production was exported (with the approval of the Agriculture ministry). Now the country is waiting with bated breath for the arrival of wheat ships from Argentina
• meat and dairy are nowhere to be found - in part due to earlier clumsy attempts at price controls, which lead to mass slaughter of farm animals, in part due to hoarding. Pretty much the only thing you can reliably find is German salami and Danish feta cheese - but at Western European prices.
• and, obviously, it's winter, so fruit and vegetables are out of season

6PM: Go to the protests against the government - which take place daily and with great turnout, but are often met with batons and teargas by the police. Rumours abound that the BSP will ask the army to 'help preserve public order' any day now - and since the general staff is entirely theirs, it's pretty certain that they will comply. PM Videnov at this point has resigned, but after the 1994 landslide win, the BSP still has a majority in parliament despite a few defections, so there is no constitutional path to a change of government, which makes people even angrier. Protesters have blocked the highway leading from Sofia to the southwest and the Greek border, allowing only essential traffic for medical reasons. Incidentally, the songs of one Slavi Trifonov form much of the soundtrack to the protests.

8PM: Huddle with the whole family in the only room in which the heating is on to watch the evening news on the national television - the sole Bulgarian TV broadcaster. The Russians have enforced a new policy in which they will only sell gas to Bulgaria through an intermediary, which spiked the prices immediately, and which made heating a luxury few can afford. The news start with Let it be - the journalists' sign of support for the protests - but from then on it's a constant stream of government propaganda - how due to a few rogue actors and some sinister foreign entities a few misguided individuals are trying to undo all the progress the government has made.

Before going to bed, better double check if you've removed the windshield wipers.

... I was in primary school then, but it did get pretty grim, and I've not even touched quite a few topics, which would be essential to get the complete picture (like the divisions within the BSP, the pariah status Bulgaria had with Western countries etc.) Still, I think this does answer your question.

[Beagle]

Looking at the current polling, stalemate and another election are the likeliest outcomes, right?

Stalemate - probably, but another immediate election is far from likely IMO. There is a joke making the rounds around Sofia political circles: "In April we knew perfectly well who would win the election [ie GERB], but we had no idea who would govern. Now we know perfectly well who will govern [ie ITN/DB/IS!MV!], but we have no idea who will win the election."

Bulgarian pollsters have a great track record with exit polls, their pre-election polls have been known to glaringly miss. There is a conceivable scenario in the current polling too, in which IS!MV! misses entry into parliament and the Bulgarian Patriots make it and this would complicate things significantly. However at the moment the expectation is that ITN, DB and IS!MV! will form a minority government, which will pass through the strategic abstention of DPS and/or BSP (or maybe with a token vote or two in support). The ITN parliamentary leader did say in an interview a day or two ago that there is nothing wrong with continuous elections in a democracy, but I think he was just being extra. The overwhelming desire among politicians and regular people alike is for a respite from campaigning and to have a regular government for at least an year. With Slavi Trifonov categorically ruling himself out as prime minister, rumor has it that ITN will support one of the two DB affiliated, Harvard educated, caretaker ministers that have gotten a lot of publicity over the past two months with their pursuit of GERB corruption. The rumor maybe completely false, of course, but it is next to certain that the next PM will not be one of the party leaders.

Time to make my prediction, I guess:

ITN / DB / IS!MV!: I list them together, because - even for a rather keen observer - at this moment it is hard to list 10 5 3 differences in policy between the parties. Now that ITN are giving interviews and participating in debates, they have planted themselves firmly on the 'Old Right' turf. In his only mainstream media interview - for Le Monde, because, as Trifonov put it, in order to find free media one has to go outside Bulgaria - Trifonov listed his political heroes as Reagan, Thatcher and Macron (one of these things is not like the others). With Covid (temporarily) out of the picture, pretty much the only pressing issue on which the parties differ is single-member districts, otherwise what separates them is style, rhetoric and - mostly - personalities. I've seen some homemade campaign stickers around the Sofia metro: "Vote for any of the three 'parties of the protest'"

For that reason, I think there may be a significant flow until the last day between the three parties that polling may not capture. But here are my expectations:
ITN - 21-24% - 'winning' (ie coming in first) provides only psychological gratification, for my money ITN will manage to overtake GERB and become the largest party, but not by much;
DB - 11-14% - how many people vote in the newly opened voting precincts in Turkey will determine if they manage to overtake DPS for 4th;
IS!MV! - 4-6% - probably overshadowed a bit in the final stretch of the campaign; they should make it, but not have a significant boost compared to April

GERB - having circled the wagons, they try and point out all the shady stuff the caretaker government and their appointees are or have been doing, but at this point it's rather like preaching to the choir - those listening are those voting for GERB anyway. Borisov made a surprise mystery trip to Istanbul to kowtow to Erdogan at the start of the week. Some have speculated that he is trying to get DPS support, others - that he was hoping to get Erdogan to threaten to release a wave of refugees if his friend Boyko is not elected, but the latter certainly did not happen. At least Borisov did not pronounce Turkey his ancestral homeland, as far as we know.

Expected range: 20-24%

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

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It is a matter of intense political importance for Bulgarian Turks that they are acknowledged as the descendants of Ottoman colonists and not of local converts to Islam. The Revival Process was motivated, at least in part, as righting a historic injustice by bringing the progeny of those forcefully converted back to the Bulgarian nation

BSP - polling indicates a slight (dead cat?) bounce, maybe because retirees who were afraid of Covid will turn out this time. Still, the party has deep internal conflicts and is not likely to get any ministerial positions in any of the conceivable scenarios after the election.

Expected range: 13-17%

DPS - as stated earlier, DPS voters are generally not swayable by political campaigning. If, however, a wiretapped conversation which emerged from an anti-corruption investigation is true, the infamous Delyan Peevski has thrown his lot entirely with GERB (who allegedly have allowed him to place 11 cronies in electable positions), which would explain the rather underwhelming result DPS got last time and means that their vote buying will be severely curtailed.

Expected range: 9-13%


The most reliable pollsters have the Bulgarian Patriots (VMRO, NFSB + Volya), nationalistic Russophilic Vazrazhdane [Revival] and exiled oligarch Vasil Bozhkov's Bulgarsko lyato [Bulgarian Summer] outside of parliament, but it would not be a huge upset to see any of the three - especially the former - make it above 4%. This has the potential to throw a spanner in the formation of a new government, but I will expound on that only if they actually make it.

[RGM2609]

How do the Bulgarian Patriots manage to stay under the threshold even united? Their voters going to ITN?

[Beagle]

How do the Bulgarian Patriots manage to stay under the threshold even united? Their voters going to ITN?

I'm surprised too - just like there has been a steady 300k 'Old Right' base for the past decade or so, there's been a rather constant 400k 'nationalist' vote and with the decline of Ataka/Attack and with Vazrazhdane apparently below the threshold, there is a very significant outflow from that camp without an evident destination. A possibility is that the agreement to have the three party leaders sit out the election may have caused Mareshki (Volya) to suspend his vote buying populist campaign of cheap medicines and fuel. His party lists were, as mentioned earlier, composed entirely of his relatives and employees, so it's not like anybody there has any personal vote. Of course, the VMRO leader's patronage network is in decline since he is no longer defense minister, but I can't believe that they squandered the money stashed during his ministry that quickly (after all, he awarded over one billion in public procurements without competition, taking advantage of an exemption in the law for projects concerning military safety). My best guess is that the decline of the 'patriots' is a combination of three factors - how transparently cynical their union is (especially considering the insults and jabs the leaders traded only a couple months ago), how subservient these parties were to GERB in government, but mostly how quiet the DPS has been.

DPS and the various 'patriotic' iterations have been using each other as bugbears pretty much forever. Fear is a strong motivator and the two sets of voters genuinely fear the others getting in power, so they have been like communicating vessels - an increase in support for DPS means that more Bulgarians fearing the Turk switch to the 'patriots' and vice versa. For the past few months the DPS, however, has been laying low and GERB has become the public face of corruption. The Bulgarian Patriots, from what I've seen, have had to switch their campaign to posturing against (North) Macedonia (like campaigning against a backdrop of a map in which Macedonia is a part of Bulgaria) and grumbling against the gays.

I don't think many voters have moved from the 'patriots' to ITN between the two elections (although a lot made that move back in April). The ones that voted either VMRO or Volya+NFSB two months ago, but won't vote Bulgarian Patriots tomorrow, are probably mostly going for Vazrazhdane (as 'true patriots') or cutting out the middleman and going for GERB. Many are probably going to sit out the election.

[RGM2609]

Lol, when these parties start railing against the gays as the main campaign message, then you just know they are doomed. Thank you for your answer, fascinating as always!

[CumbrianLefty]

Bit quiet here given that today is polling day......

[Beagle]

I'm a DB poll worker this time (so the upcoming GERB storm of indignation and fraud claims is entirely my fault), but the livescore so far shows an uncanny resemblance to the prediction above. Turnout has tanked, though, my precinct is down almost a 100 voters from April with just over an hour left to go.

[Keep Calm and ...]

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1414267476309839879

[Keep Calm and ...]

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1414268119825199105

[Beagle]

With 95.22% of the vote in (what's outstanding are some rural precincts and the overseas vote in the Americas and about 1/3 of the EU vote - so ITN has a small chance of getting the lead, but it's going to be a photofinish either way)

GERB - 23.91% - 64 MP (-11)
ITN - 23.66% - 64 MPs (+13)
BSP - 13.63% - 37 MPs (-6)
DB - 12.55% - 34 MPs (+7)
DPS - 10.59% - 28 MPs (-2)
IS!MV! - 5.04% - 13 MPs (-1)

Turnout is down about 10% (remains to be seen how many voted abroad).

These estimates may differ from the final seat distributions by 1 seat (and hopefully I didn't round up 29.5284 from my spreadsheet as 28, like I did with DPS's result last time). If, as everybody here, you view the result as the fight between the two camps, it's:

Status quo (GERB, BSP, DPS) - 129
Parties of the Protest (ITN, DB, IS!MV!) - 111

We now enter the posturing season, in which everybody will claim the moral high ground publicly while furiously wheeling and dealing in the background. The expectation, however, hasn't changed - that for at least a short while there will be a minority government of the Parties of the Protest, enabled by the tactical non-voting of BSP and/or DPS (or fractions within GERB, but that's much more unlikely) and the parties will regroup after the Presidential election in October/November.

[RGM2609]

Oof the anti-corruption parties came pretty close to a majority. Now why would the BSP and DSP back that combination? To stop the elections or in the hope those parties will humiliate themselves and disappear?

Off topic (a bit), but what was your experience as a poll worker like? Anything interesting that happened?

[Mike88]

With 95.22% of the vote in (what's outstanding are some rural precincts and the overseas vote in the Americas and about 1/3 of the EU vote - so ITN has a small chance of getting the lead, but it's going to be a photofinish either way)

GERB - 23.91% - 64 MP (-11)
ITN - 23.66% - 64 MPs (+13)
BSP - 13.63% - 37 MPs (-6)
DB - 12.55% - 34 MPs (+7)
DPS - 10.59% - 28 MPs (-2)
IS!MV! - 5.04% - 13 MPs (-1)

Turnout is down about 10% (remains to be seen how many voted abroad).

These estimates may differ from the final seat distributions by 1 seat (and hopefully I didn't round up 29.5284 from my spreadsheet as 28, like I did with DPS's result last time). If, as everybody here, you view the result as the fight between the two camps, it's:

Status quo (GERB, BSP, DPS) - 129
Parties of the Protest (ITN, DB, IS!MV!) - 111

We now enter the posturing season, in which everybody will claim the moral high ground publicly while furiously wheeling and dealing in the background. The expectation, however, hasn't changed - that for at least a short while there will be a minority government of the Parties of the Protest, enabled by the tactical non-voting of BSP and/or DPS (or fractions within GERB, but that's much more unlikely) and the parties will regroup after the Presidential election in October/November.

Interesting. About the Presidential elections, is Borisov expected to run? The current President Rumen Radev may be the favourite, however.

[Beagle]

With just a dozen or so overseas precincts left, ITN has indeed overtaken GERB and will come first by 6,000 votes, but not enough to gain a seat. BSP will definitely lose a seat from my earlier estimate, but whether it will be to the benefit of DPS or IS!MV! will be decided by the handful of votes to arrive. Considering that turnout among the American diaspora appears to have shrunk by more than half in comparison with April, I'd expect DPS to get it, but we'll know the official result in a few hours.

Now why would the BSP and DSP back that combination? To stop the elections or in the hope those parties will humiliate themselves and disappear?

By necessity (I already write far too much for the level of interest in Bulgarian elections as it is), I typically use "GERB/DPS" as shorthand for the enforcement arm of the captured state - the prosecutorship, the Bulgarian equivalent to the Direcția Națională Anticorupție and parts of the national police. The reality is, however, that that the corruption in this sector is so deeply ingrained that it transcends political parties and it operates very much like the deep state of legend. GERB has allowed this to happen and - at least to outside appearances - has control over the processes, but I (among others) have little doubt that unless something radically changes, this sector would operate just the same under another government - with hostile takeover of businesses, freezing of bank accounts and suppression of opposition journalists etc. The catalyst for the protests of the summer of 2020 and the upswell in support for the 'Parties of the Protest' was the entry of the chief prosecutor's own thugs* into the Presidency and the arrest of two of Radev's advisors on the flimsiest of pretenses after Radev expressed his opposition to some brazenly corrupt acts of the prosecutorship. I think it caused a lot of people to realize that we are in a First they came for the .... situation, and since one of the chief stated goals of the Parties of the Protest is the dismantling of this captured state, it has lead to a degree of cooperation between the Old Right and the BSP that would have been unthinkable years ago.

* ostensibly The Bureau for Protection of Witnesses, in recent years this force has become the Pretorian guard of the chief prosecutor, being directly under his command

But yes, there is also a 'let the protest parties run themselves into the ground, then the people will naturally come back to us' sense running in the BSP. And DPS are always willing to back a winner (for a price, of course).

Off topic (a bit), but what was your experience as a poll worker like? Anything interesting that happened?

Very uneventful, the voting machines really simplify things a lot. Nobody tried to sabotage the vote, break the machine or destroy/take home/eat the printout of his vote as I feared; the machines did not malfunction and printed out the tally as expected, so we didn't have to count anything on paper; even the oldest voters managed the process fairly quickly. It helped, of course, that I was in a safe DB precinct (although maybe with an emphasis on the 'Old Right') and that there were no hostile poll workers from the other parties - it was just hard at times to find our 19-year-old ITN colleague, who was trying to get, uh, friendly with a girl from a neighboring voting section. DB ended up with 7 more votes than April, but due to decline in turnout, this turned the percentage won from 31 to 35.

Interesting. About the Presidential elections, is Borisov expected to run? The current President Rumen Radev may be the favourite, however.

No, Borisov has explicitly said that he will not run. And yes, as of today, Radev is the prohibitive favorite for reelection, but I will expound more on the Presidential election when that rolls around.


Anyway, to the important news of today: BULGARIA CAN INTO SPACE!1!

Slavi Trifonov, with typical showman's flare, announced that under the ITN government, Bulgaria will sign an agreement with NASA, under which three two Bulgarian astronauts - one male, one female - and one (North) Macedonian astronaut will make their way onto the ISS within the 4 year government term.

...Now what was the other thing there, the thing that the space announcement is meant to distract from? Ah, yes, the ITN government.

In a move that apparently blindsided DB and IS!MV!, Trifonov announced that since the Parties of the Protest did not win a majority of their own, he will suspend all coalition talks (since, quote, 'coalition has become a dirty word') and ITN will propose a single party* minority government of their own. In an unusually (for him) transparent move, he announced the make up of the proposed cabinet today.

* the two DB affiliated, Harvard educated, caretaker ministers were offered spots, but declined, as did one of the other caretakers.

The good news (YMMV) is that the proposed government is about as pro-Western/American and anti-Putinist as you can reasonably expect in Bulgaria and that none of the proposed ministers appears to be affiliated with the mafia - which is more than you can say for the current caretaker government.

However, the proposed PM is an ex-tsar party minister and deputy PM, who has very much been part of the status quo that ITN is supposed to be running against - and who, up until today, was not a member of ITN. The PM-designate is smart and very personable (he was writing personalized e-mails to my mother when he was trying to get her to invest in his fund, even though they hardly know each other and she wasn't going to invest much in any case). Bad news is he has a massive Napoleon complex and he's corrupt af - nothing 'allegedly' about it.

The handful of proposed ministers that are publicly known are experts in their field, with a few already having government experience as caretaker ministers or deputy ministers in regular governments. As to the rest, many of them are too young to have any significant public profile, but reading the bios published by ITN, it's like a veritable Who's Who... of People Who Like to Purchase Who's Who-type Vanity Awards. I can't think of a decent translation of French fanfaron, but that's the word that came to my mind.

So for now Trifonov - who as the presumptive election winner will get the first chance to form a government - is saying to the other parties 'Back the ITN government, or explain to the voters why they will be going to the polls four/five times* in the space of 7 months'. He has announced that a) there will be no negotiations or compromises with any other party b) ITN will join GERB in a negative majority against any proposed government by any other party given the third mandate by President Radev. Since nobody is going to support a GERB proposed government, this pretty much means that the only chance to avoid new elections is to install the proposed ITN government. With ITN winning, what, 9% of the eligible voters's support, this, I feel, redefines popular mandate.

* including the presidential election in October/November


Stay tuned to find out if it is a bluff, if somebody is going to call it, or if this thread is going to be far more active than I ever imagined it would be when I started it (even though it is mostly myself being active).

[RGM2609]

It would actually be best for the DB&ISMV to let this proceed. By the time someone pulls the plug and the government collapses, ITN would have problems with reaching double digits.

[Beagle]

Final results:

ITN: 65* MPs (+14)
GERB: 63 MPs (-12)
BSP: 36 MPs (-7)
DB: 34 MPs (+7)
DPS: 29 MPs (-1)
IS!MV!: 13 MPs (-1)

* due to winning almost 60% in the last few UK/US precincts to report. BSP was on the verge of losing another seat due to winning less than 3% in them.
-------------
A headline in a Macedonian newspaper that made me laugh: "Next Bulgarian leader will let us into space, but not in the EU!'.
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Trifonov's gambit's results are still up in the air, especially since I don't know if it is actually meant to be a real bid for power or just to win brownie points in front of the electorate (or, as Borisov claims, a feint designed to prolong Radev's caretaker government's time in power). So far the only party to completely rule out support in any form for ITN's single party government is BSP, but obviously nobody outside of ITN (and the Tsar party ministers from 2001-2009) is happy with the prospect.

[Former President tack50]

On the note of the Tsar Party, how is his government seen? After all, the Tsar creating a political party and actually winning an election is certainly one of the most interesting stories in all of politics.

[Flyersfan232]

On the note of the Tsar Party, how is his government seen? After all, the Tsar creating a political party and actually winning an election is certainly one of the most interesting stories in all of politics.

Pretty sure he the tsars regrets not running for president and restoring the monarchy.at the very least I believe one quite that he rather be remembered being tsar and not prime minister that should give u a idea

[Beagle]

Bluff got called. ITN's rank and file (to the extent that ITN has a rank & file at all), but, more importantly, at least three of the newly elected MPs rebelled against installing a creature of the swamp as prime minister. The gossip, at least, is that ITN was faced with the prospect of surrendering their status as the largest parliamentary group (and thus losing the first chance to form a government), as more than two freshly elected deputies threatened to become independents immediately after taking the oath. A few hours ago, Trifonov posted on facebook that he's withdrawing the nomination for PM, as well as reshuffling the proposed government, in the name of stability and 'scrubbing out' GERB. The new make up and PM-designate will be announced at a press conference tomorrow.

On the note of the Tsar Party, how is his government seen? After all, the Tsar creating a political party and actually winning an election is certainly one of the most interesting stories in all of politics.

I don't know how interesting the story is, but it certainly was a watershed moment. Up to then there had been three transfers of power between BSP and SDS and vice versa, each was followed by a thorough purge at all levels of power and partisan appointments even for
the janitorial staff. The Tsar's party broke with that* and, especially once 2001-2011 President Parvanov got elected, established the new Bulgarian order, which to some extent survives to this day: the sharing of the spoils. Nobody, except perhaps the most radical fringe, is ever completely locked out in the cold.  

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* they didn't have enough people to fill the front seats as it was, much less appoint mid-tier civil servants. One of the partners in my law office, who was a Tsar party MP, regaled us with the story how the three people at the core of the improvised operations center of the newly forming party has, at most, 15 hours of sleep between themselves for the week before the filing deadline, since they were constantly trying to talk people into running for the National Movement Simeon II. More than one provincial lawyer got into parliament just because s/he filed the paperwork for the party at that place.

Treating the opposition nicely and a general laissez-faire approach isn't the only reason they still have some goodwill to this day, of course, especially within the elite circles. The Tsar government presided over a fairly rapid expansion in GDP, income levels and living standards (helped by EU pre-accession and cohesion funds) and it was probably the time when Bulgaria had the most goodwill from the Western partners; they achieved NATO accession in 2004 and secured EU entry by the end of their term in power. Very few of the ministers remained politically active after the party imploded, so it's not like they created many enemies among the current generation of politicians. For that reason, when the situation calls for somebody with political experience who can be viewed as above the fray (like caretaker governments, advisory boards and the like), Tsar party ministers are often the first ones called.

Most, however, also remember the corruption, the massive state asset sell-off, the  contract killings (with the organizer of the Tsar's security during his campaign, who got appointed Interior Ministry Secretary, always on the crime scene within an hour and having a quip or two for the press: it was one Boyko Borisov, but nobody knows whatever became of him). People also are still resentful that the Tsar government effectively surrendered to DPS* whole sectors, especially those that would get to distribute vast EU funds in the coming years like agriculture and environmental protection. DPS promptly proceeded to turn them into feuds where nobody who is not connected or at least paying their dues can do business. In short, there is a reason why Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha's government killed off monarchism in Bulgaria for good - various monarchist parties used to collect at least 200k votes between themselves at all elections between 1990 and 2001 and there was a sizable monarchist current within SDS. These days nobody at all advocates for a restoration of the Tsardom.

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The person I mentioned earlier often laments that the coalition with DPS even happened - it shouldn't have needed to. The 2001 election left the National Movement Simeon II just one MP short of an outright majority. However, when you look at the parties that didn't pass the threshold, you see:
Simeon II Coalition - 3.44% (less than 30k more votes and they would have entered parliament)
National Union for Tsar Simeon II - 1.70%

These parties were formed by grifters who were trying to get the party subsidy available for parties that get over 1% of the vote. The incumbent SDS government didn't do anything to stop their clearly fraudulent names in the hope they would steal a vote or two from the Tsar. Simeon clearly disavowed them, the two grifter parties never campaigned... and yet achieved a result far beyond their wildest dreams. Even the National Union for Tsar Kiro (a Kaldarashi Roma "King") got a few thousand voters from confused Simeon voters.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Oh, the re-do election result has been... eventful.

How likely is that whoever Trifonov proposes today after the flop of Vassilev is going to get ahead? In the back of my mind I get the idea that this is just a ploy for ITN to show they are doing something but nonetheless end up with new elections where they would expect to win a landslide of sorts. Oh and for reference, should parliamentary Round 3 be called, is there a chance it could happen on the same day as the presidential election?

I can't think of a decent translation of French fanfaron, but that's the word that came to my mind.

Maybe loudmouth or braggart?

[Beagle]

How likely is that whoever Trifonov proposes today after the flop of Vassilev is going to get ahead?

I'm as clueless as anybody, especially considering that Trifonov (or rather his scriptwriters, Trifonov didn't show up at the press conference) proposed nothing and noone today. The PM-designate and the cabinet will be announced when the time comes (this is homage to the Tsar, who used this stock answer whenever he was asked to elaborate on his political agenda during the 2001 campaign).

It is painfully obvious that ITN can't get any of the PMs on their wishlist to say 'yes'. "Don't answer calls from unknown numbers, ITN are on the hunt for a prime minister," is the joke making the rounds.

The press conference is still ongoing, but it turned into apologia for Vassilev, who apparently would have been a radical right-wing reformist, slashing tax rates and eliminating waste etc. Maybe relevant is that ITN are again not going to offer any positions to other parties (although they have softened the non-negotiation stance a bit) and that they request DB and ISMV support, without support from the 'protest' parties they will let their proposal fail even if it could muster a majority.

Oh and for reference, should parliamentary Round 3 be called, is there a chance it could happen on the same day as the presidential election?

Constitutionally no, the terms for the new elections are fixed. There is a proposal that the parties of the protest and BSP appoint the caretaker government as a permanent one for the 4 weeks or so it would take to have the two elections coincide.