The sixth early national elections and seventh overall in the past three-and-a half years took place on Sunday, and resulted in - as expected - a very fragmented 51st National Assembly, and one similar to its predecessor. With eight parties certainly entering parliament and a ninth (the populist Velichie) remaining just under the 4% doorstep, the prospects of a stable government remain slim.
Forming a mathematically feasible majority of 121 MPs would require at least three parties to join hands and all of the possible collaborations are hard to imagine at present, as they would require big compromises by some of the participants and highly unpopular ones at that. Hence, it is hard to expect that it lasts, even if it gets pushed through. This means yet another election is on the cards in the spring of 2025.
With 98.30% of the processed protocols of the sectional election commissions, as of noon on Monday, the GERB party of three times PM Boyko Borissov continues to be the first political power. With its 634,000 votes it holds 26.46% of the vote and is likely to have 66 MPs - just over a quarter of all, but still insufficient to try and push for its own government. Like most other parties, GERB has improved its score in terms of total votes compared to the June early elections. This is due to the largely unexpected slight increase in the voter turnout compared to June - 37.5% vs. 34%. Still, this is the second lowest voter turnout in national elections, again compared to the June vote.
GERB's previous rotational partners from the liberal centrist WCC-DB coalition retained second place, but lagged behind GERB by more than 12 percentage points - with 14.38% of the vote, or about 345,000 votes. It seems that the coalition has reached a plateau after damaging its reputation among its urban pro-Western voters by coalescing with GERB last year and this will be hard to repair. On the plus side, this seems to be the case for their ideological opposites from Vazrazhdane, who also stagnated at 323,000 votes, or 13.46% of all ballots. The pro-Kremlin populists were expected to overtake the liberals, but it seems like they have become "normalized" and other, more radical and anti-systemic parties have begun "stealing" their vote.
Peevski marginally wins the battle of the two MRFs
The big battle of this early election - between the two factions of the ethnic MRF, which split three months ago into a faction, loyal to internationally sanctioned mogul Delyan Peevski (MRF-New Beginning) and one, led by the honorary chairman of the party Ahmed Dogan (ARF) - seems to have a clear winner. Peevski's MRF-New Beginning got 268,000 votes and is the fourth party in parliament with 11.18% of the vote, while Dogan's wing trails far behind in sixth place with 7.29% of the vote (about 175,000 votes).
The two parties combined collect over 90,000 votes more compared to the June vote, with Dogan maintaining a stronger grip over the Turkish ethnic vote (54% of all Turks backed ARF according to the exit polls), while Peevski established himself as the leader in the Roma segment (47% of the Roma voted for MRF-New Beginning).
Their relative strength, however, remains a mystery - Peevski has long been a toxic figure for all parties (except, to some extent, GERB) and his participation in a future coalition would doom it to popular distrust. Dogan, on the other hand, might be allowed to back an anti-Peevski coalition, despite his own bad reputation. But neither option seems certain.
And the rest
The socialists from BSP improved their score for the first time in a decade, getting 183,000 votes and 7.62% of all ballots - almost 1,5% more than last time. However, this could hardly be seen as rejuvenation of the party after the Kornelia Ninova era. It is also questionable with whom the socialists could partner as they remain an unlikely partner to GERB (and also have a standing congress decision to never rule alongside Borissov) and a majority pro-Russian cabinet remains unlikely in the current distribution of power.
Then come the three populist factions - TISP and Velichie ("greatness"), which were part of the last parliament and the new entrant in the non-ideological, personality-driven category, Metch ("Sword", which is an acronym for Moral, Unity, Honor in Bulgaria) of former TISP and WCC renegade Radostin Vassilev, with 6.9%, 4.04% and 4.62% of the vote, respectively.
While Velichie did not pass the 4% mark by the end of the count, the entry of the new populists from Metch is an interesting phenomenon. The party, which gathered its popularity in social media channels like TikTok and Instagram, as well as through town hall meetings with its leadership in smaller towns, says it is opposed to Borissov and Peevski and is ready to fight them - even if it has to take the fight to the streets. It is questionable whether it has such capacity, but it is certain that it falls into the conservative, sovereignist spectrum of other nationalists like Vazrazhdane, Vehlichie and the United Patriots before them.
Is any coalition possible?
In the already established tradition, the parties that will enter the new parliament did not appear in front of the cameras to answer reporters' queries. Post-election issues were only addressed by commentators in TV studios who, with varying degrees of conviction, predicted that the 51st National Assembly would most likely elect a government. Most seem to think that the backbone of the future coalition would once again form around GERB and WCC-DB, with a big question mark over the third wheel.
It will be up to GERB to propose the first cabinet (like four times in the past four years) and Borissov has said he will extend invitations to all parties, bar Vazrazhdane. Of course, he said he prefers to work with WCC-DB, offering an "equidistant" unnamed PM as the solution to the political crisis. However, WCC-DB know well how much any collaboration with GERB could cost them, and how quickly Borissov can pull the plug. This means that it would be suicidal for them to agree to a new "assemblage."
On the other hand, Borissov can always rely on Peevski - his MRF-New Beginning was the first and only one to respond to GERB's invitation for cabinet negotiations on Sunday. But any possible cabinet that includes Peevski will be highly unpopular, even within GERB. This means that the leading party might turn to the Dogan wing and some of the other small parties. The problem with this is that neither of them seems too keen to be "devoured" by GERB's embrace, like many other coalitions before them.
This means that, even if somehow Borissov manages to come to terms with one big and one small party (let's say - WCC-DB and the Dogan wing of the MRF), or if he manages to gather support from several small ones (like MRF-Peevski and BSP, for example), this would hardly hold for long, as there is no ideological glue to keep them together. And all this makes another election next spring highly likely.
*The article was updated at 18:40 on 28 October with the final results of the vote, which leave Velichie out of parliament.
The sixth early national elections and seventh overall in the past three-and-a half years took place on Sunday, and resulted in - as expected - a very fragmented 51st National Assembly, and one similar to its predecessor. With eight parties certainly entering parliament and a ninth (the populist Velichie) remaining just under the 4% doorstep, the prospects of a stable government remain slim.
Forming a mathematically feasible majority of 121 MPs would require at least three parties to join hands and all of the possible collaborations are hard to imagine at present, as they would require big compromises by some of the participants and highly unpopular ones at that. Hence, it is hard to expect that it lasts, even if it gets pushed through. This means yet another election is on the cards in the spring of 2025.
