site.btaYet Another Poll Shows Minimal Margin between Front-runners in July 11 Snap Elections

June 22 (BTA) - The two front-runners in Bulgaria's early parliamentary elections on July 11, the GERB-UDF coalition and the There Is Such a People (TISP) party, are running neck and neck, according to a poll conducted by the Trend agency between June 11 and 18 and published on Tuesday. Face-to-face interviews with 1,003 adults also showed that six plus one formations will be represented in the next National Assembly.

If elections were held now, GERB-UDF would still come first with 21.7 per cent of the votes, despite a marked decline of several percentage points from its performance at the April 4 regular elections. TISP would come second with 20.2 per cent, edging up slightly from the preceding poll. The Bulgarian Socialist Party firmly keeps its third place with 16.1 per cent, by a wide margin from both the runner-up and the fourth strongest player. The race for fourth place is too close to call as Democratic Bulgaria and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms would win 11.2 per cent and 10.9 per cent of the votes, respectively. The pollster notes that since that surveys are conduced only in Bulgaria, the votes by Bulgarians abroad are likely to decide who will end up fourth.

Rise Up! Thugs Out! will get 5 per cent, while with 3.9 per cent, the Bulgarian Patriots coalition is very close to clearing the 4 per cent electoral threshold.

Vazrazhdane [Revival] stands to win 2.3 per cent, while the Bulgarian Summer party of embattled gambling mogul Vassil Bojkov, who fled Bulgarian justice in Dubai, would win 1.9 per cent.

Forty-eight per cent are certain they will go to the polls, 30 per cent do not know yet, and 22 per cent will not vote.

Eighty-one per cent of the people going to the polls have decided firmly whom they will vote for, while those who do not know yet are 19 per cent.

A month on from the appointment of the caretaker government, its performance is approved by 35 per cent and disapproved by 42 per cent. The approval ratings of President Rumen Radev are largely unchanged at 49 per cent, but since the April 4 elections, his disapproval ratings have fallen from 40 per cent to 32 per cent in June. RY/ZH

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