Yesterday's 2-in-1 European and National elections concluded with a clear and expected winner, an even more fragmented, seven-party National Parliament and a new redistribution of the relative weight of the main political players in the new National Assembly compared to the previous one. It will take at least three political forces to form a government, although the possible combinations are very, very limited.
The results come against the backdrop of extremely low voter turnout - the lowest since the beginning of Bulgaria's transition to democracy - about 32%, or just 2 million votes. This means that all parliamentary parties, including the winners from GERB (and excluding TISP) have lost support in absolute terms, which paints a bleak picture for the legitimacy of the country's democracy.
GERB is the big winner in the vote, but the possible scenarios for governance are limited. According to the exit polls of various agencies and the parallel counting, Boyko Borissov's party won the parliamentary elections with a lead of just under 10%.
It is followed by three formations, whose results are within a one percent margin - WCC-DB, MRF and Vazrazhdane. The three parties swapped places during the exit polls and the parallel counts, but with 50% of the ballots having been counted on Monday morning, the reformist coalition regains second place, while MRF (which led in the exit poll of Alpha Research) got relegated to third place, less than half a percentage point ahead of Vazrazhdane, who are fourth.
The exit polls and the parallel counting by the polling agencies put BSP in fifth with 7% of the vote. Sixth is Slavi Trifonov's TISP party, which has a slightly better result than in the previous National Assembly and is also the only incumbent party to increase its support in nominal terms compared to the previous parliament. And the surprise of the evening is the seventh party over the threshold for parliament - the Velichie (translated as "greatness") party of the creator of the infamous Historical Park Ponzi scheme Ivelin Mihaylov.
Who are Velichie?
Mihaylov's faction was created for the local elections last year, but looked more like a local party because it won just over 40% of the votes for municipal councilors in the municipality of Vetrino, where the Mihaylov's amusement park is located. The party is formally headed by a certain Albena Pekova, who is not a well-known personality in politics.
One of the explanations of the under-the-radar success of Velichie is its footprint in social media, mainly TikTok and Youtube, where Mihaylov and his associate, the self-declared former Colonel of the National Security Agency, Nikolay Markov, are extremely popular, especially among young audiences, Bulgarians living abroad and those disillusioned by the current political status quo. Both of them are well-known for their strong pro-Russian and anti-Western rhetoric (masked by pleas for neutrality in the Ukraine conflict) and conspiracy theory-peddling.
The big question: who can GERB govern with?
Shortly after the end of the election day, GERB leader Boyko Borissov thanked the party members and voters for their support, but did not look too happy with his predicament despite the convincing victory. Firstly, because having won the election by such a margin his party will be expected to form a government. Unlike the previous parliament when GERB and WCC-DB had 133 MPs together and formed a rotating cabinet that was only supported by MRF, now Borissov will need two official partners to do so.
The most desirable partnership option for Borissov is, once again WCC-DB, but after the vote the leaders of one of the reformist parties - WCC - announced on their Facebook page that they will remain in opposition in the next parliament. "We will use the support you have given us to be a strong opposition to the plans of Borissov, Peevski and whoever else chooses to be the fig leaf that will cover the budget cuts, racketeering, and the cementing of [Peevski and Borissov's] control over the [intelligence] services, regulators and judiciary for years to come," the party said.
In this situation Borissov will obviously have to look for partners among the other formations outside the MRF, whose co-chairman Delyan Peevski said in the election campaign that the movement would give support in exchange for an official partnership after the vote. Borissov himself also commented in the morning after the vote that "from the incantations of the morning I do not see how a government will be formed after the elections. We can't do it with the MRF alone" - without making it clear whether he meant that he did not want to form such a government or that he referred to the insufficient number of MPs that the two parties will have.
The third possible participant in the new majority could be Slavi Trifonov's formation, which before the vote made a statement that it could support an expert cabinet. BSP leader Kornelia Ninova also spoke about an expert cabinet as a possible option for future governance. After the vote, however, in response to a question on whether the Socialists would participate in a ruling majority, Ninova replied that "it is unnecessary after 10 years of struggle with the GERB model to ask me whether we would support GERB."
Regardless of whether he could attract any of these formations as a third partner of GERB and MRF, none of it would help Borissov sell his cabinet as a pro-Western one. He will also be mindful that even if some government is formed and led by GERB, it will start ruling with extremely low public support.
First, because of the low turnout in these elections, which seems to be in the low 30%. Second, he knows that any form of cabinet - ordinary, expert or caretaker - that receives overt MRF support - would be unpopular and would negatively affect his and his party's image. Probably for this reason Borissov did not comment on the possibility of forming an expert or programme government after the vote, but said he would do so when the final results come out.
And what about the European elections?
The results of the parties for the European Parliament according to exit polls are very similar. However, because of the higher threshold for entry (5.88% vs. 4% for the National Assembly), it is not clear whether TISP would be able to cross it. Yet, according to 3 out of 4 forecasts they will send one MEP to Brussels.Bulgaria has 17 seats in the new European Parliament and according to the agencies' forecasts GERB will again have the most seats - 5 or 6. It is difficult to say how the seats of WCC-DB, MRF and Vazrazhdane will be distributed because of their close results: each of these parties will get 2 or 3 seats. BSP surely gets one seat, and maybe - one more, which will make it the party that loses the most in terms of MEP numbers (5 in the previous parliament).
Yesterday's 2-in-1 European and National elections concluded with a clear and expected winner, an even more fragmented, seven-party National Parliament and a new redistribution of the relative weight of the main political players in the new National Assembly compared to the previous one. It will take at least three political forces to form a government, although the possible combinations are very, very limited.
The results come against the backdrop of extremely low voter turnout - the lowest since the beginning of Bulgaria's transition to democracy - about 32%, or just 2 million votes. This means that all parliamentary parties, including the winners from GERB (and excluding TISP) have lost support in absolute terms, which paints a bleak picture for the legitimacy of the country's democracy.