site.btaSeven Formations Would Have Passed 4% Barrier to Date, Exacta Survey Shows

Seven Formations Would Have Passed 4% Barrier to Date, Exacta Survey Shows

Sofia, September 23 (BTA) - If the parliamentary elections had
been held on September 23 GERB would have received 36.5 per cent
of the votes of Bulgarians determined to cast their vote, the
Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) would have garnered 20.2 per
cent, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) 11.9 per cent,
and the Reformist Bloc 7.3 per cent, a national representative
survey of Exacta Research Group shows. The survey was conducted
between September 15 and 19 by means of a face-to-face interview
among 1,000 respondents.

The survey results show that another three formations will enter
Parliament: ABV with 5.3 per cent, Bulgaria without Censorship
with 5.2 per cent and the Patriotic Front with 5.2 per cent. The
difference between the three formations is so small that their
order will probably remain a mystery until the elections
themselves, Exacta commented.

The electorate of the MRF is the most highly mobilized one now
as 96 per cent of the people who voted for this party in the May
2013 parliamentary elections intend to do so again.

Just as it was before the vote for European Parliament, the
electorate of GERB is more mobilized than that of the BSP, as
well as having a larger hard core. At the same time, GERB's
peripheral vote is swelling because of the conformist vote.

The data from the present national representative survey of
Exacta do not allow preclusion of the opportunity for seven
political formations to find their way into the next Parliament,
the agency said. The results were taken from a regular national
representative survey and cannot be interpreted as a forecast
of the agency.

Fifty-five per cent of the respondents in the September 20
survey claimed they firmly intend to vote. At the very beginning
of the campaign, these did not exceed 50 per cent. Whether this
5 per cent increase is a trend, or rather, a snapshot of
electoral attitudes in the middle of the campaign is yet to be
seen, the sociologists say.

According to the survey, 12 per cent of the respondents claim
they have changed their decision for whom to vote in the first
two weeks of the campaign. The campaign has not influenced the
choice of 88 per cent of interviewees. The people influenced by
the campaign are mostly voters aged below 30, residents of the
capital and respondents with higher education.

The preferential vote could tone down the dissatisfaction with
the ordering of party lists. This vote could even prove a
salvation for some parties, as it motivates their voters to
changer the order of the lists instead of going to vote for
other parties, the experts say.

Compared to the first week of the campaign, the survey has
registered a 6 per cent increase in the share of people who
intend to cast a preferential vote - from 25 per cent at
September 10 to 31 per cent at September 20.

The preferential vote is an incentive to participate in the
elections for one-third of Bulgarians. Bulgarians with higher
education, aged over 40, affluent and the citizens of the cities
that are regional centres more frequently claim they will
exercise this right. Just as in the vote for EP, now the
electorate of the Reformist Bloc again declares intentions to
vote preferentially more often than that of other parties
(two-thirds). The number of people who will vote for other
parties and resort to preferential vote varies between 40 and 50
per cent.