site.btaUPDATED June 9 Voter Turnout Likely to Edge Up, Survey Finds

At the end of the election campaign, а new poll by the Alpha Research agency shows some increase in the expected turnout for the June 9 elections for national and European Parliament. An increase is observed in the support for fringe parties, the pollsters comment.

The survey, published on the polling agency’s website, was conducted from June 1 to 4 with own resources. A total of 1,000 adults from across Bulgaria gave a standardized interview at home.

Around 2.7 million people, or 42% of those who have the right to vote, plan to go the polling stations on Sunday. Just like at the start of the campaign, the interest in the European Parliament (EP) elections is lower than that for the snap general elections, though the mobilisation grows here is as well, reaching 39.5% of voters.

Despite the expected clash in the centre of the political playing field, the campaign has an unexpected effect: mobilisation in support of smaller parties while the top players continue to rely on their cores of firm supporters.

The majority of those who planning to vote (72%), mostly loyal supporters of the parties represented in the 49th National Assembly, made their decision before the official start of the campaign. Another 16%, among whom the supporters of new formations prevail, made their choice in the last month.

Intrigue until the last moment lies in the attitude of 12% of those who have decided to vote but are yet to choose who to support. They are evenly split in their preferences: 6% are still undecided but lean towards one of the leading parties and another 6% consider backing one of the smaller parties. The decision of these voters could change both the ranking between second and fourth place and the number of formations represented in the 50th National Assembly (given the proximity of some of the participants to the 4% entry treshold).

GERB-UDF retain their leading position (25.1%), without significant dynamics in the election campaign, and finish with a significant lead of about 10 percentage points over their direct opponents. Their role as the winner of the vote is beyond doubt, but their task of forming a majority in the new National Assembly remains difficult.

Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) have suffered serious erosion of support. They enter the final week of the campaign with 15.4%, but are down two points compared to a month earlier and are virtually even with Vazrazhdane and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), which are mobilising supporters.

Vazrazhdane (15.2%) is among the few parties to show growth during the campaign. The party managed to wrest support from a diverse range of opponents: Bulgarian Solidarity, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), There Is Such a People (TISP), and some of the smaller nationalist formations, but in turn has also been "attacked" by newly emerging parties in this niche.

As usual, the MRF (14.8%) ends the campaign with a high degree of mobilisation, which in case of a possible drop in turnout could give it more weight. So far, there is no evidence that the MRF has fulfilled its ambition to broaden its social base, and it remains concentrated in the groups of society that traditionally support it.

The BSP is among the sufferers of electoral dispersion to the left. A week before the vote, 8.1% of those who decided to vote were behind the formation. The likelihood is high that the BSP will once again be the only parliamentarily represented formation on this spectrum, but still, the debris from it is tearing some of its voters away.

TISP mobilised support during the campaign and can currently count on 6.2% of the votes. As usual, anti-establishment voters are behind them, willing to express a kind of punitive vote.

A week before election day, one of the new entrants in the race, Blue Bulgaria (3.3%), is closest to the 4% treshold for entry in Parliament. The coalition, an extension of the local Blue Sofia, is emerging as an alternative for disillusioned right-wing voters. Former voters of both GERB and CC-DB are turning to it, mostly from the capital. Thus, the current poll confirms the trend registered by Alpha Research at the start of the campaign that the vote in the capital, where the erosion in support for the leading parties is most noticeable, could prove to be key for the final result.

Another new coalition inspired by the local elections in Sofia, Bulgarian Solidarity, has also made a significant bid in the current election campaign. For the time being, however, the formation has not been able to overcome the competition of the many formations on the left and exits the campaign with a similar result to its starting one, 2.4%.

After the wavering electoral peripheries that were registered at the beginning of the campaign, the lack of a conformist vote - the one that follows the winners - is becoming increasingly clear. This is the first time in the three-year cycle of snap elections that there has been such a high share of support for the so-called 'small parties'. A week before the vote, 9.5% of those who decided to go to the polls planned to cast their vote for approximately 20 other formations, some of which have the possibility of winning around 1%.

Voting attitudes in the EP elections largely replicate those for the national parliament: same hierarchy and positions, similar level of support for the parties. The higher electoral threshold of 5.88%, as well as voting restrictions for Bulgarians in non-EU countries, make the answer to the question of how many parties will win a seat in the European Parliament relatively more certain. These are GERB-UDF (25.0%), CC-DB (15.9%), Vazrazhdane (15.7%), the MRF (14.1%), and the BSP (7.9%). There is some ambiguity with TISP (5.9%), but it is likely that the party of Slavi Trifonov will also jump over the higher electoral threshold of 5.88%.

At the end of the current election campaign, Alpha Researchy asked which events have managed to attract the attention of voters. Two main forms continue to stand out as the most interesting - candidate interviews in the media (32%) and pre-election debates (26%).The pre-election meetings have mainly impressed the hardcore supporters of the larger parties, while the smaller parties have managed to reach their supporters through the media and social networks.

In summary, three main intrigues have emerged: the alignment between second and fourth place; the size of the punitive vote concentrated in the new small anti-establishment parties, which is a potential signal to the political elite; and the emergence of a seventh party in Parliament and its influence on a future governing configuration, says Alpha Research.