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

[Beagle]

By the powers vested in me by, uh, being Bulgarian, I designate this the Bulgarian Elections Megathread.

Here is a collection of all the previous Bulgarian election threads, which may or may not be useful reading for anybody who wants to gain some understanding of Bulgarian politics:

Presidential elections: 2006, 2011, 2016
Parliamentary elections: 2005, 2009, 2013, 2014, 2017
Local elections: 2011, 2015/2019

[Beagle]

I have designated this the elections thread, not 'politics and elections' thread. In the past, GMantis and I have tried to put in a lot of detail about the parties, personalities and policies that factor in Bulgarian politics, but I don't think I'm going to do that anymore. There are three main reasons and I think it will work as a sort of explainer for a lot of what follows in the upcoming posts.

1) A chronicle of Bulgarian politics will read a lot like a classical Russian novel – a bunch of loathsome characters doing loathsome things to other loathsome characters without any plot twists, dei ex machina, happy endings or redeeming features whatsoever, to the point where the reader, which would be you, wishes that the entire cast is hit by a train (but only one train, wtf, Tolstoy) - including the narrator, which would be me.

2) Over the past few years I've had a lot first and second hand observations which lead me to firmly believe that much of the Bulgarian political theater is actually kabuki between various patronage networks that bear increasingly less allegiance to their ostensible ideologies. I am not going to expound on this other than butchering the English language a bit – hopefully you'll understand what I mean:

Everybody who is somebody has somebody who has an 'in' with anybody who is somebody

3) Most importantly,  policies and personalities and even scandals matter little when according to a reputable poll, when asked 'How much attention do you pay to political news', 75% answered with “None at all”. Flooding the zone with sh*t has always come naturally to GERB and, especially considering the horrendous media landscape, this has lead to people – understandably - tuning everything out. Approximately half of those 3 out of 4 are at least semi-regular voters, though, and AFAIK they base their vote on their personal feelings for and against Boyko Borisov – the latter camp may be actually larger, but it scatters their vote between the opposition parties.

[Beagle]

As to the election where polls open in less than 24 hours – 240 seats in parliament will be voted on in 31 multi-member districts with mostly closed lists and 4% threshold and will be distributed through Hare-Niemeyer (on the national level).

Bulgaria is a parliamentary republic – it bears repeating, since the outgoing parliament has been by far the weakest wielder of legislative power since Communist times. Borisov last made an appearance in the parliament hall back in October 2019 and has refused to answer any opposition queries since then, and it's not like there has been that much opposition. When you also take into account Covid restrictions, the fact that 3 out of the 4 expected top parties' leaders refuse to debate or give interviews, as well as the poor weather outlook, this will without a doubt be the lowest turnout parliamentary election since 1990. The general assumption is that low turnout favors the established parties, while ITN and IS! MV! would be hurt.

Here's where I think things stand (my expected range is based on polling, taking into account the known biases of the pollsters, the trend is over the past 30 days of campaign)

GERB (leader: Boyko Borisov, 2017 – 32.6%)
Expected range – 26-32%
Trend: slightly upward, mostly because of 'better the devil you know' low propensity voters

BSP (leader: Kornelia Ninova, 2017 – 27.2%)
Expected range – 18-24%
Trend: sharply downward, although it must be said that the two 'red' pollsters are both owned by people who are very much opposed to Ninova and may not be overestimating the BSP support like in the past

ITN [Ima takav narod, “There are such people”] (leader: Slavi Trifonov, 2017 – N/A)
Expected range – 14-18%
Trend: upward, mostly from 'a pox on both their houses' voters
[for more on Trifonov, see the 2016 presidential and the 2017 parliament election threads]

DPS (leader: Mustafa Karadayi, 2017 – 9%)
Expected range – 12-20%
Trend: stagnant. I mean, there are literally tens of thousands who are voting for DPS tomorrow but won't know it until the money exchanges hands, but the DPS voters are generally not swayable by political campaigning

DB [Democratic Bulgaria - the 'Old Right', a coalition between Yes, Bulgaria, the Greens and DSB] (leader: no individual leader; 2017 – 2.9 for Yes, Bulgaria and the Greens; 2.4% for DSB)
Expected range – 5-7%
Trend – N/A, all parties in this range are too close to the MoE to make out any discernible trend

IS!MV! [Izpravi se! Mutri van!, “Rise up! Thugs out!”] (leader: Maya Manolova, 2017 – N/A)
Expected range – 3.5 – 6%
[for more on Manolova, see toward the end of the the 2015/2019 local elections thread]

VMRO (leader: Krasimir Karakachanov, 2017 – 9,3% as part of the United Patriots coalition with NFSB and Attack)
Expected range – 2.5 – 4.5%

[origin stories for the more creatively named parties available upon request]

There are no less than 7 additional parties about whose entry in parliament I can create a plausible narrative, but as the reputable polling suggests they will stay below the 4% threshold, I will cover them only in case the exit polls tomorrow show they have a reasonable chance of making it. But I would be remiss if I didn't point out how it is common across the world for politicians to make a big show of signing a contract/covenant with the country, but what happens if they break that contract? Well, Vesselin Mareshki, leader of the Volya party (who are running an opportunistic coalition with another party currently in parliament – NFSB), has a contract with Bulgaria available at his gas stations and pharmacies.  If you sign it, and Volya-NFSB come first or second in your district, and within 2 years you don't have a state- or privately owned gas station within 30 kms of your home where you can buy gasoline at least 7.5 eurocents cheaper than the average for the area, Mareshki, who is a multimillionaire, will personally pay you 5000 BGN (approximately €2.5k). And when will ur flop parties, huh?

Government formation is going to be a nightmare, as there are no two parties who appear likely to be able to have a majority on their own– not even the suicide pact that would be a GERB-BSP 'grand' coalition. The only three parties that have expressed willingness to work together are the three extra-parliamentary parties, who even in a best case scenario for them will not come close to 120 seats. Right now everybody is playing a waiting game to see which parties actually make it – a 5-party parliament is going to be a different universe from a 7-party one. Most of the tea leaves readers seem to agree that unless a clear coalition is available – which appears extremely unlikely today – there will be a 'technocratic' government to last until the Presidential election in November, in which an 'axis of evil' of GERB, DPS and parts of BSP will attempt to knock off the incumbent Radev. It is considered anathema for GERB to yield power to a caretaker government appointed by Radev, so they might be willing to support even a rather unfavorable government until – they hope – another president is inaugurated in January. The problem is that Borisov – who clearly wants the position – is presumably smart enough to realize that unless something radically changes until the autumn, he'd lose and he'd lose ugly.

In any event in a few days Slavi Trifonov will, in all likelihood, be kingmaker. I am, unfortunately, the worst person to ask about what he is going to do, since the last time I watched his show was 2004, I was home alone sick from school and the cat was sleeping on me so I couldn't get up to get the remote. I hated every minute of it and I've never watched him again. Since all candidates of his party are strictly prohibited from giving interviews or making TV appearances on channels other than the party's own and since they are by and large political unknowns, ITN is a riddle wrapped in an enigma... but I'm pretty sure there is organized crime in the kernel.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have.

[Beagle]

I'm aware that Romania and Bulgaria have less in common than people often assume, which might make comparisions between them iffy, but it's kind of strange to see where the countries were politically in the Ceaușescu/Zhivkov days and where they are now. Contrary to what would have been expected, Romania now seems to have a healthier democracy than Bulgaria, with an actual anti-corruption party as a major player, a draconian National Anticorruption Directorate, stable-ish party system and so on.

Do you have any idea why?

My best guess would be that in an interesting cause-and-effect relationship, the Romanian people were left with somewhat stronger pro-democratic instincts than Bulgarians exactly because of how much worse communism was for them. But still, it took 30 years for Romania to get to this point (and still PSD is the largest party and the far right is rising), post-communism was a mess to get over. I hope and think that the political situation in Bulgaria will begin to improve soon, one can not fight the course of history forever (if anyone would have told me in 2011-2012 what Romania would look like right now, I would have laughed so hard). Beagle can correct me if I am wrong in my assumption.

This is technically politics and not elections and a complete answer would require pages upon pages, but briefly:

- RGM is correct: Bulgaria in general - and obviously there are counterexamples - has been governed remarkably moderately for a Balkan country and certainly did not have anybody as malevolent as Iliescu in a position of power in the past 25 years. Civic society generally is strong enough to block the worst excesses* and at since the government of Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha there is a general agreement that politics is not a zero-sum game and the parties in opposition are allowed to have a seat at the table where the spoils are divided. As a result, dissatisfaction is always bubbling, but never really boiling over, and since the catastrophe of 96-97, there really haven't been any 'cathartic' events that would bring about radical transformation. In the same timespan I can name three such occasions in Romania (maybe not to the level of the Kuciak murder in Slovakia, but enough to cause a 15 point shift in opinion polling virtually overnight)

* wracking my brain for an English equivalent to German Schweinerei, any suggestions?

- RGM opened my eyes to a marked difference between Romania and Bulgaria - both countries have substantial diasporas, but apparently the share (at least among voters) of menial workers is much higher in Romania. The Bulgarian emigrants tend to be the activist type and in their absence, the critical mass needed to achieve a positive change is much harder to achieve.

- I was going to write something about the utter collapse (financial, moral and otherwise) of traditional media in Bulgaria, but I'm not really familiar with the media landscape in Romania to make a comparison.

- last but not least: personalities do matter. The 97-01 'Old Right' PM's choice to appoint a sycophantic paranoid schizophrenic as chief prosecutor (who eventually turned against the PM) left the criminal justice system a mess that was ripe for takeover by the current puppetmasters.

[Beagle]

Will get to responding to people, but first the initial 'pre-final' exit polls - there's at least 5 agencies polling, I haven't seen all yet:

GERB - 24.5-26%
BSP - 16-19%
ITN - 15-18.5% (who may be ahead of BSP)
DPS - 10-11%
DB - 9.5-10.5% (who may be ahead of DPS)
IS!MV! - 4.5-5.5%
VMRO - 4-4.5% (who may be out after the votes from abroad come in)

Loads of things to comment on, this is a stream of thoughts, not any narrative:
- turnout was pretty decent, I will expand on this when answering to Tender, but it's either that covid and weather didn't scare the voters or that the pent-up anger at the two main parties was enough for people to overcome their fears
- turnout machines suffered their worse collapse since 1990
- there may be a very ugly implication in the fact that the great result for DB is achieved in the first election where they have a massive observer machine in operation (by the way, they will report the results live and will be much faster than the authorities since they will only need to report the precinct protocols, while the official results will need to be fed into the central commission's computers
- anti-corruption parties did great

[Beagle]

Does anyone have an accessible livestream? Everything on BNT seems geoblocked to me

This works when I use my vpn: https://www.gledaitv.live/watch-tv/64/bnt-1-online
The interface is pretty intuitive if you want to change channels

Of course this part also played a role. And does ITN count as anti-corruption?

No, of course not - but their voters did actually think they are voting against corruption. My 2 acquaintances who voted for Bozhkov did not 'believe' in his anti-corruption message too - they are simply out for Borisov's blood and I'm not sure it's only metaphorical.

Seats based on Exit polls
GERB 70 (-25)
BSP 48 (-32)
ITN 41 (+41)
DPS 30 (+4)
DB 28 (+28)
ISMV 12 (+12)
VMRO 11 (-1)
Volya-NFSB 0 (-21)
Ataka 0 (-6)

Majority 121
GERB+DB+VMRO 109
BSP+ITN+DPS 119
= ISMV = Kingmaker?!

No, simply put - no. This isn't how this works - I don't have the time to seek out the meme, but there is zero chance of the proposed coalitions.

[Beagle]

I recommend this very useful Twitter thread about basic information about the parties running on tomorrow elections:
https://twitter.com/politics_bg/status/1376138761843716102

Maybe relevant how the "new" parties (ITN, ISMV) will perform and if one or both nationalist right-wing parties (VMRO and/or Volya-NFSB ticket) will surpass the 4% threshold, expect low turnout due to political apathy rather than corona as they reports.

Pretty sad to see that Social Dem parties still cannot gain ground anywhere (with a few exceptions) even in a global medical crisis - which should be their core competence ...

Alright, this will go unheeded - and I've certainly been guilty of this myself - but in the international elections forum it's all too common to enter a thread for a minor country's election with a mentality that does not move too far from 'Go team Right!' or 'Go team Left!' (the latter being much more common here). In Bulgaria this is not particularly useful.

Attempts such as the above to place the parties on the left-right/liberal-conservative axis are well-intentioned, but quite simply put, virtually all parties today are deeply personalist, they stand for whatever the party leader has claimed today - even though it may be the complete opposite of what the leader said yesterday, the party manifesto or even what their European family is officially endorsing (the ill-fated Istanbul Convention being a prime example.

I may not have paid too much attention to BSP's campaigning on the medical crisis, but I don't think I'm too far off the mark when I say their campaign was "Yeah, we'll do what GERB did, but also we'll import Sputnik V vaccines from Russia", which... yeah, I don't think it's very social democratic.

[Beagle]

Parallel counts are not complete, but I am making a few somewhat risky projections:
- ITN have surpassed BSP as the second party, BSP will come third for the second time in modern history (2001, the coming of Simeon II, was the first). It remains to be seen whether they will manage to stay above their 2014 nadir in support (15.4%)
- VMRO are out, again showing that when a party's under 5% in exit polls, they will remain under 4% in the actual count
- DPS will remain 4th largest party
- DB will not manage to overtake DPS, but there is a likelihood that they will surpass the 2014 Reformist Bloc (the previous iteration of a united 'Old Right')'s 8.9%

[Beagle]

Signing off for the night. This is the results page you want to follow if you want the national result faster than the official results page that was posted earlier.
I will try to get back to the questions and comments made itt tomorrow. A few late night developments:

- Borisov has - as predicted - proposed an 'expert' cabinet until December. This looks unlikely, or at least in the form he envisions
- ITN have drawn a line in the sand that they would not form a coalition under any circumstances with GERB, BSP or DPS (or VMRO if they make it in). One of the more plausible post-election scenarios was that GERB would sway them by proposing to implement all the electoral reforms that were passed in a referendum proposed by Trifonov back in 2016 (with the most major change being a switch to single member districts), but since GERB and ITN cannot reach a majority, this, I think, is off the table.
- IS! MV! leader Manolova is at the Sofia counting center trying to stop the steal, but this is really a part of her M.O. now - she also did it after the mayoral election, which I think she still refuses to concede to this day.
- a major surprise is the actual result for exiled oligarch Vasil Bozhkov's party (or rather the party he's taken over since his own 'Bulgarian Summer' was not registered in time). While at this time it appears that he'll stay below the threshold, he'll come much closer than anyone expected.

[Beagle]

- a major surprise is the actual result for exiled oligarch Vasil Bozhkov's party (or rather the party he's taken over since his own 'Bulgarian Summer' was not registered in time). While at this time it appears that he'll stay below the threshold, he'll come much closer than anyone expected.

What is bno?

See above

[Beagle]

Right, the DB parallel count didn't end up a success - the official results are almost all in (before the mandatory retabulation, which seldom moves much, but does catch most of the errors that remained in after the first input - I've seen a precinct where it was fairly obvious that the DPS votes were placed in the wrong box). Here is the preliminary seat count, which may move by a seat or two in the final results:

(compared to 2017 result) ((compared to 2014 result))

GERB: 75 (-20) ((-9))
ITN: 51
BSP: 43 (-37) ((+4))
DPS: 28 (+2) ((-10))
DB: 27           ((+6*))
IS!MV!: 14     ((+3**))
* compared to the Reformist Bloc
** compared to ABV - if you took ABV's declared 'reformist leftist' position at face value, the two parties are comparable, although in practice ABV was definitely not anti-corruption
In all, it is remarkable how close the 2021 result mirrors the 2014 one, although the populist coalition (Bulgaria without Censorship) took only 15 seats then.

[Beagle]

- there may be a very ugly implication in the fact that the great result for DB is achieved in the first election where they have a massive observer machine in operation (by the way, they will report the results live and will be much faster than the authorities since they will only need to report the precinct protocols, while the official results will need to be fed into the central commission's computers

How common is electoral fraud believed to be? I've always heard dark whispers but never much concrete.

I wouldn't be so dismissive. Past practice (as you seemed to acknowledge in an earlier comment) makes such concern far from unwarranted. Of course, Maya Manolova has certainly a flair for dramatics, and if there's fraud happening, it's hardly going to be in the heavily monitored capital. But outside this attitude is certainly useful.

In the linked event, the supposed arrest of poll workers/vote buyers happened only in Manolova's press release (from what I've read, the police showed up, declared that nothing untoward was happening, gave the supposed vote buyers a warning and left). After the Kostinbrod affair, Manolova's declarations of electoral fraud are widely considered to be crying wolf and in any event yelling at random data-entriers is not actually intended to achieve anything except publicity.

Is there fraud in Bulgarian elections - yeah, without a doubt. How much is very much subject to discussion and also depends a lot on your definition of fraud. The anti-corruption fund actually just did a rather comprehensive study of all precincts in Bulgaria in the elections between 2013 and 2019. They considered 4 indicators of fraud:
- unusual turnout spikes or extreme differences in the winning party's margin compared to other precincts in the same municipality
- large fluctuations in turnout between elections of the same type
- random minor parties that fail to gain entry in parliament winning precincts (I learned for the first time today that a party that gained all of 5500 votes - 0.17% of the 2014 parliamentary vote - won 6 precincts in Kyustendil that year) 
- sharp rises or declines in major party support in elections

If you follow the link, you can check the maps for the precincts at risk in the 2014 and 2017 elections for yourself. The study acknowledges they fail to control for a favorite son effect and for the environment -  a large number of BSP-won precincts were flagged in 2017, but I'm sure in most, if not all, of them nothing particularly nefarious occurred - the BSP was simply recovering from a historic low in the 2014 election and regained many of its traditional voters.

But tl, dr: there were at least 170 thousand votes - about 5% of the total cast in precincts that were flagged for 3+ out of the 4 fraud indicators. This is a large amount, but not enough to put the entire process in doubt, IMO.

As to the gist of the question - how common is fraud in the actual vote counting - I choose to believe in Hanlon's razor. A photo that made the rounds in my DB circles yesterday showed an excerpt from a precinct's initial (paper) report that read:

DB
votes on paper ballots: 10
votes from the voting machine readout: 30
total votes: 0

Cue cries of fraud. However, the rows above read:

[hopeless BSP splinter party created by the 10 MPs who bolted when Ninova was reelected leader]
votes on paper ballots: 0
votes from the voting machine readout: 0
total votes: 20

Obviously this was a case of transposition of rows. This is corrected at the initial voting reporting, at the first data entry point, at the second data entry point or at the latest - at the mandatory vote retabulation. The actual vote counting at the precinct is the weakest point in the entire process - there are poll workers from every parliamentary party in each precinct, but especially where there are no poll observers, it is common that some of the less, uh, partisan poll workers will sign the blank papers before the voting is completed and head home, leaving the others to count the votes as they will. This, however, tends to balance itself out between the parties and these precincts tend to be small.

There are, of course, rumblings that there is some large scale fraud at hand, 'the voting machine's code was done by Venezuelans', that tens or even hundreds of thousand of votes are added or erased before the final reports. I think that this is disproved by the peculiar Bulgarian tradition of effectively live-reporting exit polls despite it being banned - earlier this required some creative thinking on the media's part, who were forced to hide parties behind some book, song or movie title, but after a court ruling that social media is not subject to the same rules as media websites (or in the 90s - as radio), they just post the reports on their facebook or twitter profile. There have always been at least 4 competing agencies providing their reports at least 5 times during the voting day. On the national level there has never been a discrepancy between the exit polls and the final result that can not be explained by the margin of error.

[Beagle]

Is every political party in Bulgaria 'populist' as wikipedia describes?

Wikipedia infoboxes are varying degrees of useless in most of Eastern Europe, but yes, that's a correct description. Of course, if everyone is populist, no one is, and some populists are populister than others, so keep that in mind.

Nah. DPS may be called many things (e.g. kleptocratic, oligarchic, parasitic...), but populist - in any meaningful sense of the word - isn't one of them. I'm well aware that the DPS's campaigning style is vastly different between places and, come election time, Roma ghettos neighborhoods see a lot of 'you vs the [Bulgarian] elites' type of rhetoric from the DPS emissaries (as well as free food packages branded with the party's ballot number), but the real division lines they draw are ethnic/national/religious, not economic/political.

The derogatory nickname for DB supporters is the 'smartbeautiful', because of a reported utterance by a policeman guarding the summer protests of 2013 - which were against the appointment of DPS oligarch Delyan Peevski as security agency chief and thus populated by a lot of DB types: 'This crowd looks so much smarter and more beautiful than the winter protesters'. The winter protests of 2013 were caused by a spike in electricity and heating prices and thus drew mostly poorer, older, 'working class' participants. This apocryphal saying became a source of pride and was repeated thousands of times on social media, to the point where the 'Old Right''s detractors ran with it and used it against the arrogant elitist out-of-touch 'Old Right' base. After all, according to exit polls, almost 3 out of every 4 DB voters have a bachelor's degree or higher, when the percentage of the population that either has or is currently in higher education is less than 1/3.

And as for the BSP... well... I guess one way to describe them would be 'populist, but they really really suck at it'.

Edit: forgot to add the religious division line. Religion is - thankfully - not a significant political wedge issue here, but it is a fact that the DPS gets about 70-75% of the Muslim vote in Bulgaria with 20-25% going to GERB

[Beagle]

Anyone up for a primer on Bulgarian constitutional law? Anyone? No? OK.

So I will not bore you with arcane minutiae of the procedures that will happen after the new parliament's opening today and all the various traps and tricks that my fellow lawyers have devised if GERB really want to grind things to a halt and ensure that Boyko Borisov - albeit in a caretaker capacity - becomes the longest-serving [nominal] head of government in Bulgarian history. As of tomorrow, he needs 52 days to overtake the figurehead that served as prime minister for most of the Zhivkov years.

Borisov's days are numbered for now anyway: GERB intend to propose a government headed by an ex-FM, ex-'Old Right' figure. This is, of course, posturing, as there is absolutely no chance it will win approval in parliament, but under normal circumstances it will take up to a week until the ball passes in ITN's court.

I had postponed posting any updates in this thread because of the complete radio silence by ITN. Slavi Trifonov is - conveniently enough - sick with covid, he took the oath on zoom today and then logged off without taking part in the procedural votes. His deputies too have been mute on any topic other than the most basic stuff. The question on everyone's mind is whether or not they will pick up the mandate when their turn comes, since if they don't, we're almost certainly heading for a July election. After today's first parliament meeting, the possibility of this appears diminished.

Although nobody expects the new parliament to serve a full term, as long as ITN propose any government at all - even if Trifonov emerges from covid isolation with an announcement that Hoxhaism is now the official state policy and that Bulgaria will form a bulwark against revisionism - it will get at least 121 votes in parliament. In part because of self-preservation, in part because of willingness to give enough rope for ITN to hang themselves, but all 5 non-ITN parties have pronounced  their willingness to support in some way the formation of a government by ITN. And it seems that ITN are willing to try.

GERB's latest ploy is to reintroduce the single member districts that Trifonov proposed back in 2016 (if interested, check the presidential election thread of that year which also has a lot of coverage on that year's electoral rules referendum pt. 2: electric boogaloo). Introducing single members districts would be the death knell for all minor parties and possibly even BSP, so it would have placed GERB, DPS and ITN in an informal coalition against the rest. However, an off the cuff remark by Trifonov's deputy seems to show that ITN will not try and pass single member districts - at least not in the first few months of parliament. ITN will apparently concentrate on introducing mail voting, removing the restrictions for voting abroad and some other procedural and relatively non-controversial steps.



 

[Beagle]

Looking at the election map posted by GMantis (great work!) it seems to me that introducing single-member districts would be... sort of a death knell for ITN too. So I think I should not be surprised by that off the cuff remark. Am I wrong?

This site - which presents the election results as if the election was held in single member districts - is a fantastic resource to answer this question. I am surprised the guy who maintains it has been this diligent, but he has updated it with the 2021 results (also with a projection of a 120* seat parliament, as per the electoral rules referendum's third question) and it also has maps with the 2014 and 2017 results.

* although I believe the ITN proposal is for only 111 seats to be elected from Bulgaria proper, with 9 seats elected by the diaspora

Of course, the problem is that it is in Bulgarian and if your knowledge of Cyrillic is non-existent, I imagine it will be quite difficult to navigate the maps. But I can answer any questions that you may have.

So, with this projection, the first round results would indeed be quite staggering:

GERB - (ГЕРБ-СДС in the map) would be ahead in 171 seats (and in 53 additional runoffs)
DPS (ДПС) would be ahead in 27 (+ 22 runoffs)
DB (ДБ) would lead in 18 (+7 runoffs)
ITN (ИТН) would have an advantage in 13 (+108 runoffs)
BSP (БСП) would lead in 11 (+39 runoffs)

However the proposal is for a two round system - in seats where nobody has 50%+1 vote, the top two candidates qualify for a run-off. As in 2021 only 10 DPS candidates would manage to win outright, there would have been 230 run-offs, in the overwhelming majority of which the GERB candidate' lead would be very precarious when you consider that, by my count, they managed over 1/3 of the vote  in no more than 40 seats. ITN would be perfectly poised to collect all the combined opposition's votes and the GERB lead is usually close enough that even a 55:45 split of the others vote in favor of ITN would be enough to overtake them. And the split would be more like 80:20, considering that GERB has cannibalized all the parties that are close to them in outlook. ITN would also have an easy time in the few run-offs in which they would run against BSP, as the Socialists are rather toxic to a majority of voters almost everywhere. Applying a rather crude blanket formula of my projection how the vote flow would go in a second round, the end result would be something like:
ITN - 96-100 seats (sweeping almost every major Bulgarian city bar Blagoevgrad and, obviously, Sofia)
GERB - 84-88 seats
DB - 22-24 seats (all in Sofia)
DPS - 20-22 seats (in general DPS needs to be over 44% in the first round to stand a chance in Bulgarian plurality seats, as Bulgarians of all political persuasions tend to rally round whoever the non-DPS candidate is in the second round)
BSP - 4-8 seats
VMRO - 1 seat

Now, of course, the dynamics of a 'majoritarian' race would be completely different, the above is just a thought exercise. And this election was unusual in that there were 5 parties that all won districts. Back in 2017 only GERB, BSP and DPS would have had representation - and GERB, with only 32% of the vote, would have something like close to 170 seats after the second round

[Beagle]

I'm pasting the discussion from the election maps thread for the record:

Although nobody expects the new parliament to serve a full term, as long as ITN propose any government at all - even if Trifonov emerges from covid isolation with an announcement that Hoxhaism is now the official state policy and that Bulgaria will form a bulwark against revisionism - it will get at least 121 votes in parliament. In part because of self-preservation, in part because of willingness to give enough rope for ITN to hang themselves, but all 5 non-ITN parties have pronounced  their willingness to support in some way the formation of a government by ITN. And it seems that ITN are willing to try.
 

Other than BSP backtracking in their support, there isn't much new to report. If ITN proposes a government, as of today it appears that they can rely on the support of DB and IS!MV! (92 seats between them). From their limited public statements, ITN's preferred course of action would be for BSP and/or DPS to fail to register for the sitting and for the government to be elected by 92 to 75 with however many abstaining*. If - as seems likely - their government would have to rely on the support of one of the toxic status quo parties, ITN wouldn't want to sully their reputation and would not put a government to the vote.

* but if both BSP and DPS register for the sitting, the vote would fail**, as the government needs the support of over half the MPs present
** technically GERB have promised that if the proposed government is up to 10 votes short, they would make up the deficit in the name of stability, but this is posturing and nobody is taking it seriously

If ITN does not propose a government or if it fails the vote, the ball passes in the president's court, who has to give the third and final mandate to one of the other parties. For a number of reasons Radev will almost certainly pick DB, but despite the legal loophole that DB wants to exploit (if the elected government resigns immediately after their election, parliament is not dissolved), there is practically zero chance to avoid early elections as soon as July.

Today Slavi Trifonov emerged* from covid isolation and let us know that:
- the ITN nominee for PM will be a female chess grandmaster
- the nominee, however, will hand the mandate back to the president, without proposing a government
- it is unacceptable for ITN to rely on the support on any of the 3 status-quo parties

* posted on facebook; due to the aforementioned media collapse, these days both Borisov and Trifonov are communicating only through facebook

While the procedure will be drawn out for a further week or two, it is almost certain that there will need to be a make-up election in the summer. The early polling suggests that ITN did not have a significant 'fresh face' boost and that they're still second, a couple of points behind GERB, while there is a three way race for third between DPS, DB and BSP**. New elections would also bring back the nationalists in parliament (VMRO will almost certainly form a coalition with at least one of the 5 other parties in that spectrum). The survival of IS!MV! is iffy due to some friction within the coalition.
Of course, Radev's caretaker government will probably try to put their finger on the scale by making GERB's mismanagement of... basically everything public knowledge, so it is far too early to make predictions.

** due to the ITN proposed removal of restrictions of voting stations abroad, DPS will presumably receive a substantial boost from Turkish voting stations. Although while DPS were supposed to have made up with Erdogan, AKP-alligned media have been lambasting them since the election and it may be that the Turkish boost will be less sizable than expected. ITN and DB would also benefit from the increased vote abroad.

[Beagle]

What is pls the position of ITN in the cleavage West (EU, NATO) vs East (Russia)? Are they similar to the GERB or not?

Good question to which I would also like an answer. ITN have been intentionally vague on foreign policy (as on many other issues). They are not conspicuously pro-Russian like BSP or most of the 'nationalist' parties, but as a populist party, they're prone to switching sides like a weather vane. As of today, I'd agree that they are similar to GERB - with the caveat that GERB is also notoriously fickle on this issue.

[Beagle]

And is Trifonov harder in the Macedonian question? I have seen his video about Macedonia where he made many jokes about Macedonian language and so on. Or is this the mainstream in BG?

Ha, you've seen something I haven't - may I ask why? As to the latter question, even though I haven't seen the video in question, I'm pretty sure he did express a viewpoint that is prevalent in Bulgarian discourse. As to the first, I was about to say that we have no clue (again), as the words 'Macedonia' appear nowhere in the party's platform. However, Trifonov posted the following last year on his personal fb page:

The proposal to the Macedonians, oops ... sorry - the North Macedonians, that if they recognize their historical Bulgarian roots, we shall recognize the current state of affairs, and the current state of affairs is to recognize the existence of a Macedonian language and nation - is the best proposal that they can get.

And this is taking into account that their entire current statelet's premise is anti-Bulgarian rhetoric, calling us Bulgarians - Gypsies and Tatars.

Dear Macedonians, excuse me - North Macedonians, I will get used to it, but I need time - to be honest, I am a very tolerant person, but everything has its limits. I see you wait for Bulgarian passports, I see you come to the Bulgarian Black Sea coast and the Bulgarian resorts, I see your children come to study at Bulgarian universities, I see you claim that "Jovano, Jovanke" is a Macedonian, sorry, North Macedonian song, and I wonder - people, why? Aren't we gypsies and Tatars? So, you want gypsy passports, you come to the Tatar Black Sea, you study at gypsy universities and "Jovano, Jovanke"* is, after all, a gypsy song (I apologize to the gypsies - these people that are so emotional and displaced all over the world).

So North Macedonia will not get a better compromise and if it does not recognize its historical Bulgarian roots, it will exist outside the European Union. And that's on that!

So, uh... I guess he's at least as hard as the outgoing government?

* Trifonov has recorded the most popular Bulgarian take on that song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqCqbd8-4Xc

[Beagle]

Very amusing, much droll sketch. And yes, that is typical Slavi Trifonov humor. 'Барам' is a verb that means 'to request; to require; to seek [both to search for something and for permission]' in Macedonian, but in modern Bulgarian it is 'to fondle' - almost always sexually. Endless mirth ensues.

Keep the questions coming if you have them.

is he playinf the anti-covid card and anti-vax card? Ihave read somewhere his comparison with the Romania AUR?

ITN were by far the most covid-lockdown skeptical of the main parties, that much is true. Their chief spokesman on the issue - an immunology professor who ran for president back in 2011 and got 0.18% - made a point of photographing himself wearing, um, female lingerie in place of a mask to protest the mandate. And similarly to AUR, social media was the most fertile ground for campaigning on the issue - people did seem to think that voting for ITN would bring an end to restrictions, although this was never publicly stated afaik.

However, ITN are significantly more moderate than AUR, their [public] position could be summarized as 'Covid is a slightly more contagious and deadlier flu, people should take protection, but it is up to their personal responsibility and reason to decide what'. Not 'Covid is a conspiracy designed to keep the sheeple enslaved/to get them chipped'; 'Covid is deadly only for the very sick and very old, the government is generating paranoia to stay in power indefinitely'; 'Covid is an anti-chinese hoax designed to enrich American vaccine producers'. Those parties failed to gain any significant traction and stayed well below the threshold. And as to anti-vax, given that the party spokesman is in charge of the development of the supposed Bulgarian Covid vaccine, ITN are not anti-vax, although they - naturally - oppose making vaccination mandatory.

Of course, their anti-covid position may have possibly been hurt a bit by the fact that the aforementioned spokesman was out for most of the campaign due to fighting for his life in hospital with Covid. Possibly.

Is any oligarch or a strong economic group behind him? His campaign had to cost something....

Complicated issue. I'd refer to my posts on the first page - for one, there are very few oligarchs that give to a single party only, even if they are strongly associated with GERB or BSP or DPS. In general, GERB are tolerant of financial support for other parties, as long as they get their own share. While there is oligarchic support for ITN, their campaign was financed almost exclusively through the candidates themselves, a lot of whom are either mid-tier businessmen, lawyers and doctors or these persons' children. Like I said earlier, the candidates were prohibited from making media appearances outside the party's own (pay) TV channel, so that made the campaign cheaper. ITN even refused the media package that by law is afforded to all participating parties.

I have read also in the foreign press that he know politics very weel, but it seems to me not very likely if he was so long the face of the political talkshow...

What you read is true. It would probably be a waste of my time to type up Trifonov's 30+ year history in the public eye, given how much interest there is in Bulgarian politics. I'll just repost the second point of the second post in this thread:

Everybody who is somebody has somebody who has an 'in' with anybody who is somebody

 

[Beagle]

Great, I made mystake in the last question. I read that he doesnt know politics very well...I was surprised with this because I know about Ku-ku, Kanaleto, referendums and so on...thanks for answer this...

You mentioned his own TV Chanel. Does it mean he is the owner of it?

Ah, I see. No, he's thoroughly familiar with everybody who factors in Bulgarian politics. He may be prone to walking in traps set by the more politically astute players, but this remains to be seen. And yeah, he owns the 7/8 cable TV station, which can be watched for the princely sum of 0.78 BGN per month (approximately €0.4). Every Bulgarian political party has their own TV station (GERB, arguably, has 4 or 5, including at least 2 out of the 3 terrestrial broadcasters), Trifonov is the only one with the chutzpah to make it paid.

A bit of an unrelated question, but why is your vaccination campaign so far behind the rest of the EU? Are the anti vaxxers so influent, is the government royally messing it up or a combination of the two?

The anti-vaxxers are not (yet) a factor. The roll-out campaign has been colossally inept and haphazard, but the vaccination lag is mostly due to the actual lack of vaccines. Back when the EU were making their collective purchase, Borisov's government decided to bet on Sanofi and AstraZeneca, whose vaccines appeared to be close to fruition, and to forgo most of the available quota for the more expensive RNA vaccines (which was picked up mostly by Germany). When Sanofi failed to produce and AstraZeneca got delayed, Bulgaria was left high and dry without vaccines, which led to urgent Pfizer/Moderna purchases, but the regular deliveries began only last month. And since the Pfizer vaccines were reserved for elections personnel - a lot of whom failed to show up at their assigned vaccination times - this also led to a substantially lower vaccination rate.

We're still a few weeks from the point where everybody who wants to get a mRNA vaccine can get one. Perhaps interestingly, polls showed a significant positive turnaround in the willingness to get a vaccine once the government opened the floodgates and allowed everybody to get AstraZeneca in specified hospitals without waiting their turn. It seems that a lot of people saw the queues lining in front of hospitals and got FOMO.

[Beagle]

Radev (in what might be the worst mistake of his presidency) has given the third mandate to form a government to BSP, which means that the question mark can be safely taken out of the thread title - BSP has no hope of forming a government.

I think DB made it (informally) clear to Radev that they wouldn't propose a government either - Wednesday's stunt where GERB, BSP and DPS in concert blocked the parliament sitting really proved that a government that has to rely on the status quo to break the status quo is doomed from the start. And the legal loophole I had mentioned earlier is now closed, as parliament severely hamstrung GERB's outgoing government (of course, too late to block a lot of appointments and public procurements), but also any other government acting after its resignation.

The question mark is now whether BSP returns the mandate immediately (in which case the election will be on July 11) or wait until after St. George's day (July 18).

How likely is it for the next Parliament to fail at forming a government too and therefore, a third election in an year?

The vote buyers have families to feed and there is the presidential election coming up too! Think of the children! Yeah, it's not completely inconceivable, especially since if certain non-palatable parties manage to get in parliament somehow, but I would be shocked if there's a third parliamentary election in 2021. If it comes to it, there will be an 'expert' government until the census (which was canceled in 2020) is completed and single-member districts can be formed.

[Beagle]

The election will be held on July 11. BSP will hand back the mandate immediately on May 5, but Bulgarian legal doctrine is that the count will start on the first working day after parliament is dissolved on the 7th. The first Sunday two months away from the 10th is July 11th.

This is the fact in this post, the rest is my commentary:

BSP is not opposed to the election reforms which seem to be the main objective of the new opposition in the government

[citation needed]. This parliament is going to end up with a grand total of 20 or so really contested votes, they're not that difficult to parse.
BSP opposed:
- removal of restrictions on number of voting stations in non-EU countries*
* it is unclear if the removal will actually take effect, since parliament also removed the texts allowing for opening of voting stations outside of embassies and consulates abroad and when ITN tried to return to the question to remove the contradiction, BSP blocked it on procedural grounds
- the formation of an 'overseas' electoral district
- single member electoral districts
- mail voting/remote electronic voting
- updating the voting rolls/introducing active voter registration

BSP supported the replacement of the electoral commission, video recording of the vote count and kinda/sorta making voting by machine in precincts with over 300 voters mandatory.

Of course, their opposition on some issues made a lot of sense for logical, legal and/or political reasons (why would BSP facilitate voting abroad when they came 6th with 6.5% of the vote there). However, allow me to have my reservations about how much of an opposition party BSP were and are - again borne out by the GERB-BSP-DPS coalition on the only vote this parliament will take that remotely touches on reform in the captured prosecutorship.

As to BSP's chances in the upcoming elections (and in the future), yeah, BSP is likely to lose more ground in July. It must be said, though, that BSP's slide is caused not only by external factors, but also by Ninova's intransigence in asserting her leadership. Over her 5 year tenure as BSP leader, she has fallen out with/ostracized/removed:
- president Rumen Radev
- all her living predecessors as BSP leader
- 2 out of the 5 BSP mayors of major cities elected in 2019
- 3/5 BSP MEPs elected in 2019
- BSP's veteran MPs who had served in 3+ parliaments
- many, if not most, of BSP's countryside 'red barons'

The last part is perhaps most crucial for the party's electoral prospects, as these are their chief source of controlled votes and local 'influencers'. At some point they probably needed to be brought to heel, as they were getting too independent and/or close to GERB. Still, Ninova's exercise in 'How to lose friends and alienate people' caused a loss of votes that is comparable to Covid's effects.

That having been said, BSP's long term prospects appear bleak to me even once Ninova is gone for purely demographic reasons, unless they get a charismatic leader and/or extraordinarily lucky. If we trust the exit polls, BSP got:
33% (1st place) among voters aged 60+
13% among the 31-60 crowd
6% (joint 5th/6th place with the exiled oligarch's BNO party) among voters 30 and under

I'm reminded of a statement by a BSP deputy leader that raised some eyebrows a few years back. "Socialism is a sexually transmitted disease," he intoned when introducing his daughter from the roster at some party event. It may have been a joke gone wrong, but it's not not true in Bulgaria. Pretty much the only young people who vote Socialist are 'legacy' voters and even among them the party suffers a terrible attrition rate.

[Beagle]

I'm reminded of a statement by a BSP deputy leader that raised some eyebrows a few years back. "Socialism is a sexually transmitted disease," he intoned when introducing his daughter from the roster at some party event. It may have been a joke gone wrong, but it's not not true in Bulgaria. Pretty much the only young people who vote Socialist are 'legacy' voters and even among them the party suffers a terrible attrition rate.

... and this guy has just been made spokesman of the newly installed caretaker government. He's been off the radar for a while so his appointment was rather surprising. President Radev's choice of ministers was less surprising, although there was an expectation in addition to the caretaker PM - a career military man like Radev himself, who had been his advisor and defense minister in his previous caretaker government in 2017 - there'd be a heavy touch of olive green/camo to the cabinet. Instead, it's crimson.

Is there really no way to embed youtube links? I've been trying to insert Tom Lehrer's Fight Fiercely Harvard, but no dice

It comes not only from a certain Ivy League university, though, it's also because among the few ministers who have been party men, there are 2 or 3 representatives of the leftist opposition to Ninova within the BSP*. At a party congress a few years ago, the new Justice minister (and my one-time legal theory professor) said, "I don't want to be more Catholic than the Pope... but based on our proposed party platform, the Pope himself is much more Socialist than us". But the caretaker government also contains a number of 'Old Right' or at least DB-friendly ministers, as well as one of the founders of IS!MV!. Most portfolios,  however, went to anonymous mid- to high-tier career public servants. In any event, this government is fairly clearly anti-GERB, but they will not get the opportunity to do much due to the limited nature and lifespan of the caretaker government.

* in her pique, Ninova essentially banned high-ranking BSP officials from taking part in the caretaker government, but the ones that Radev appointed are outside the leadership

Anyway, I wanted to retract my earlier assertion that ITN's anti-covid stance is that moderate. I've been to a family function where it turned out there were quite a few ITN voters and, well, there's no need to list all the rather startling statements I've heard, but it was pretty heavy stuff.

[Beagle]

Huh, so immediate new elections? I imagine with bleak prospects.

All parties - for various reasons - feel like they'll do better in the July election. GMantis posted a plausible scenario below, but it's far too early to make any prediction whose hopes are going to be dashed.

So to sumarize, GERB might well have a better chance to form a government after new elections, with their nationalist partners entering parliament and IS!MV! not doing so. When I heard it suggested before the election that  ITN was nothing more than a GERB controlled fake party designed to steal the anti-GERB votes from the real opposition, I dismissed the idea as a cynical conspiracy theory. But with the ridiculous attitude of ITN and GERB's strangely complacent attitude, I'm not prepared to dismiss as readily as that...

You can do that by adding [youtube] before the URL link and the same but with a slash after the link. Something tells me you don't use the advanced editor? There's a specific button for that there.

Many thanks. Let's see if this works - I tried the youtube tag, but the video never showed up in the preview. And I'm afraid I don't know where to find the advanced editor.

Edit: welp, no, it does display the video, but also messes the tags up and apparently hides part of the text around it. Still, thanks for trying to help.


Anyway, 3/19 of the government are Harvard graduates. Maybe not that many, but it's more than the 2/19 female ministers - which, as some GERB-friendly media have pointed out, is the worst gender imbalance in 25 years. I should have bolded party men earlier.

Hahahahaha lmao. I am a Catholic leftist and have at times semi-seriously described myself as a "Pope Francis Socialist" and I love this quip. And from the little I know I think your Justice minister is not wrong.

Very much not wrong.

Is this mix of party figures of different stripes and of anonymous non-partisan public servants the norm for caretaker governments in Bulgaria?
[Coincidentally, it is roughly the same structure as Italy's current government, although our circumstances are of course significantly different]

Pretty much, yeah - 'democrats of all colors', as Radev introduced this lot, and either non-partisan(ish) civil servants, university faculty or businessmen. 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, so the then President Stoyanov felt justified in appointing a rather partisan caretaker government under the SDS Sofia mayor.

[Beagle]

Other than the predictable bickering over the outrages uncovered by the caretaker government and some questionable decisions by the above-mentioned government, there are a few developments worth mentioning with 50 days to go until the election:

• BSP have reunited with its various 'reformist leftist' splinters - ABV (see 2014 and 2017 Parliament, 2016 President threads), ,[sic] movement 21 (ibid) and one other minnow. ,movement 21 had been an integral part of the IS!MV! coalition and its defection is a symbolic blow, although electorally it's worth 0.5% at most. Still, it's not like IS!MV! have a lot of breathing space between themselves and the 4% threshold.

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

Show

reading back, I realize that I never explained what amused me so much about the since removed campaign spot of the ,m21 leader in a rowboat with a sheep, a wolf and a bale of hay from her 2016 presidential campaign.

Is joke from Latvia. I tell now.

Latvian try to cross river. Has dog, potatoes, and dead son's body. Can only take one across river at one time. If he leave dog with potatoes or corpse, dog eat them. Is very sad. Also is not good boat.
 

• VMRO and NFSB+Volya have - as predicted - joined in a coalition creatively named 'The Bulgarian Patriots'. I thought about posting the various jabs and insults the 3 party leaders have traded between themselves over the years, but that would be gratuitous and would take several hours. Plus the party leaders, as a condition for the coalition's formation, will not be on candidates lists.
• Most pollsters are keeping their powder dry until the official start of the campaign and the ones that have published their polls are not particularly reputable, but the general picture is that GERB is still in first, despite losing some support, because ITN's refusal to even attempt to form a government hurt them. It's still within MoE, though. All other parties seem to be marginally up at the expense of GERB and the non-parliamentary parties, but I'm very doubtful this will hold for all.

 --------
On a separate note, 2 weeks before the parliamentary election, there is going to be a special election for mayor of the town of Blagoevgrad. Ordinarily an election in the 15th largest Bulgarian town, despite it giving birth to Dimitar Berbatov, would not merit any mention, but it can be viewed as an early sign of how the election will go and will certainly serve to build and push a few narratives. The problem is that Blagoevgrad's local politics are, uh, quirky even by Bulgarian standards, because all the various patronage networks that coalesce around GERB or the oligarchic party du jour for national elections run under separate party lists for local elections. The result is that there are 14 formations represented in the 41 member municipal council (an increase from 12 in 2011 and 13 in 2015), with the top party - GERB - winning all of 12% of the vote. And in a funny, but not funny haha, way, most of the GERB councilors currently are actually in opposition to the national party (since they are loyalists to the arch-corrupt former mayor, who got ousted in 2019 and soon departed for the party of the former GERB second in command), while Boyko Borisov's party can count on the steadfast support of at least 4 groups that ran under the guise of various opposition parties.

Anyway, the above has little to do with the actual mayoral election, where three major candidates are running:
- the BSP incumbent, who was removed from his position once his GERB opponent discovered that he had failed to divest from his companies within the legally mandated 30-day term (although it took 15 months for the removal to take effect because the court case went all the way to the Constitutional court)
- the GERB candidate, who came 3rd in the 2019 election when he ran under the banner of a Volya - astroturf 'Green' party coalition
- ITN are running an ex-municipal councilor who last ran for the de rigueur Eastern European party-of-the-aging-rockstar-what-will-shake-up-the-rotten-system-(pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain). It's unlikely that he'll make the run-off, but he should siphon enough support to ensure that a run-off takes place. Still, the BSP candidate is favored and Ninova will gladly enter the final push of the campaign with the wind in her sails if/when he prevails.