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

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This thread is great!

Bulgaria is a nation I want to develop a greater interest in. All I know that has not already been mentioned here, though, is that some days ago I watched a TV news report about the country which among other things talked about mafia networks who import Italian rubbish and illegally burn it in Bulgarian incinerators.

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Also if that exit poll is true, great news imo, with far right parties not making the threshold. Bulgaria would join the small "no far right" club of EU countries.

Sadly it seems to still have tons of oligarch led corrupt parties, but this election seems to be an improvement? I generally distrust anti corruption parties but it seems the corrupt people are getting punished, even if it is in many cases by voting a different set of oligarchs

VMRO is very much a far-right party, though they tend to focus more on the Macedonian issue where they have the widest popular support.

What does focusing on the Macedonian issue mean in practice? I know that there is a sense in Bulgaria that Macedonians are actually Bulgarians, but what does ВМРО state or propose specifically?

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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.

Well, the word populist itself may be argued to be varying degrees of useless.

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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.

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?

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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.

Beautiful!

I actually can read Cyrillic, although my knowledge of the Bulgarian language is basically non-existent.

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

Aaah, I had not realized that. I can intuitively see why ITN would be favoured by a runoff system. And yes, obviously if such a system were actually implemented the dynamics would be completely different, but your thought exercise was very interesting nonetheless. Thank you!

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

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

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.

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".

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.

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.

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]

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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.

You can select the advanced post editor in your profile settings under "Atlas - Forum Options".

I don't know what was happening to your post exactly, but the YouTube embed works perfectly fine for me. Here is what you were trying to do:

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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?

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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.

The fact that he called a press conference to announce the new PM-designate (the Plan B, I presume one might say) and then neither did he show up at the conference nor was the PM-designate actually named... makes me acutely understand why you called the first cabinet list proposal "unusually transparent" lmao

Has the press conference now concluded? In what ways did ITN soften their non-negotiation stance?

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.

Thank you. And actually I realized I am not sure of this - is the date of the presidential election already known?

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- SNIP -

Thank you for your informative replies to all of my points. And all I can say about ITN's policy shift is: lmao.

This is my favourite thread on the forum.

Thanks. The number of countries where 'Make politics boring again' would be a winning slogan is huge, but I realized that for Bulgaria this would mean resurrecting Leonid Brezhnev and he was a walking corpse long before his death, so I shudder to think what his zombie would be like.

I do wish GMantis was here, even though we may not see eye to eye politically - not only to keep the thread updated, but also to put up some maps. I could do a municipalities map once the DB activists get their sh... act together and put up all results on their platform, but it could take weeks and I'm not sure how to create a map key.

Of course it would be great if GMantis were here for ideological diversity and more viewpoints and takes, but I am sure I speak for Heat and others as well when I say that you are doing an absolutely outstanding job of keeping the thread updated yourself.

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Today was the second round of a minor local by-elections day, caused by a number of convictions, covid deaths and resignations - in one particularly illustrative case of prospects in rural Bulgaria, the mayor resigned because she found it more worthwhile to go and take care of nonnas in Italy rather than to serve her community of 4,000.

Ah yes, famously badanti i.e. elderly carers seem to be disproportionately Eastern European women here. But I had no idea some were mayors back home, lol.

Anyway, thanks yet again for keeping posting these update effortposts. Yes, some of us manage to read them!

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This is not all that relevant but I just realized Hristo Ivanov looks weirdly like Matteo Salvini and I can't stop thinking about this.

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Bulgaria [handshake] Italy

Populist 'anti-corruption' party started by TV show personality that's been slumping in the polls pulls out of coalition of chaos forcing early elections in autumn 2022. sh**tshow ensues.

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In lieu of actual news, I'd like to share a few jokes about our caretaker PM, whose rather rare and antiquated first name means 'pigeon' in Bulgarian, as you may have found out if you used online translators from Bulgarian news sources. Yes, 'flying rat'.

Oh, I'm sure he will get along well with the Slovenian PM then!

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What has happened of ISNI? Did it disband or did it simply fail to recover from not entering the previous Parliament? And if the latter, is it about to disband now?

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Is the reason DPS won a lot of municipalities in Montana Oblast but zero in Sliven Oblast despite the latter being just as Romani and much more Turkish (I love Wikipedia) that BSP has much more residual strength in the former just like in all the northwest which lowered GERB's score? And relatedly, why is the northwest the most Socialist area of Bulgaria?

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Thanks to both of you for your replies! They are much more informative and in depth than I could ever ask for. Posts like these are why this thread is one of the best in the entire forum - simply unmatched.

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Unless there are questions or some extremely noteworthy developments, I expect that the next time I post will be some time after election day - the return of the paper ballot will mean that we poll workers will have a much busier time during the election day and especially during the counting and reporting.

I have a question! How do Bulgarian Turks tend to vote in Turkish elections?

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PP being "Macedonian agents" is absurdly based, I appreciate their consistent commitment to being the party for Atlas posters.

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Could you make a post describing the sociopolitical geography of Sofia and which parties poll better in which districts (and whether this mayoral election could see changes in that respect)? I have a vague knowledge that the centre is wealthier and more liberal, unsurprisingly, but I'm sure the details are a lot more complex.

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I am trying to gauge if there is any interest in discussing other, ostensibly non-political elections - the chairmanship of the Bulgarian Football Union which was just held, as well as the election of the next Patriarch of the Bulgarian Orthodox church, which will be held after the parliamentary election. Unsurprisingly, these elections have turned into proxy political fights with significant implications. Post if you are interested in one or both, but if it is just one or two people, I probably will find other ways to occupy my time.

I am interested in both, but especially in the former  because it reminds me of something I have been wondering for a while - what's up with Ludogorets? An oligarch club suddenly becoming a juggernaut is not shocking for a country like Bulgaria, but the scale of it seems truly unique.