site.bta Alpha Research: Radev Has 10% Lead on Tsacheva in Final Poll before Presidential Runoffs

Alpha Research: Radev Has 10% Lead on Tsacheva in Final Poll before Presidential Runoffs

Sofia, November 11 (BTA) - A final poll among voters held by Alpha Research and Nova TV three days ahead of the presidential runoffs in Bulgaria shows that the Socialist-backed candidate Roumen Radev gets 49.6 per cent of support among those who are determined to vote, and the candidate of the ruling GERB party, Tsetska Tsacheva, 39.1 per cent.

Radev's lead is mostly due to the support of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) electorate, who voted for Plamen Oresharski in the first round of the elections: 90 per cent of these voters now support the retired general.

He also appears to have won over 80 per cent of those who voted for ABV candidate Ivaylo Kalfin and 40 per cent each from the voters of nationalist Krassimir Karakachanov and businessman-turn-politician Vesselin Mareshki.

Tsacheva, too, has mobilized additional support, be it not of the same scale as Radev. It comes from three groups of voters: those whose first-round choice was Traicho Traikov (56 per cent of them), those who voted for Karakachanov and for Mareshki (25 per cent from each). She gets practically nothing from Oresharski's and MRF's electorate.

Three out of five respondents see Radev as a possible corrective to the GERB government and Prime Minister Boyko Borissov. Two out of three respondents see Tsacheva as the candidate who will not allow Bulgaria to swerve from its European developmental course.

Based on the official voter registers, some 52.6 per cent of voters (approximately 3.6 million) are expected to cast a ballot in the second round of voting in the presidential elections, the pollsters say.

Nearly one in five of the supporters of the candidates who couldn't make it to the runoffs, choose not to vote on November 13 but the overall turnout promises to be high for a second round of voting.

A quarter of the voters have not yet decided how to vote. Those who are considering marking the "None of the above" box, are likely to re-consider in the last moment and opt for either candidate and change the outcome in either direction: broaden or close the gap that appears to exist between Tsacheva and Radev, the pollsters say.