site.btaMayoral Runoffs: Too Close to Call in Sofia, GERB Loses Varna to CC-DB but Keeps Plovdiv, BSP Wins in Ruse

Sofia and 18 regional capitals in Bulgaria held mayoral runoffs on Sunday. The election was too close to call in Sofia where Vassil Terziev, the candidate of Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB), initially took a convincing lead over the nominee of a BSP-led coalition, Vanya Grigorova, but then the gap narrowed in the parallel count. Elsewhere in the country, exit polls and the parallel count of votes show that GERB lost Varna to CC-DB but kept the mayor's office in the second biggest city of Plovdiv, in Pleven and Veliko Tarnovo. CC-DB prevailed in the southern city of Blagoevgrad by a narrow margin, and the Socialist candidate in Ruse, on the Danube, was re-elected. 

Appearing briefly - and alone - outside his campaign HQs 30 minutes after the end of the voting day, Terziev thanked everybody who backed him and those who voted, and said his team will be holding a news conference on Monday when the official results are out. He would not say whether he was speaking as a winner.

At a brief news conference shortly after the elections, Vanya Grigorova and her team would not concede defeat and looked hopeful for a turnaround. “We still hope and we believe that freedom is a reach away,” Grigorova said. The leader of the Sofia chapter of BSP, Ivan Takov, said his organization believes that “we will be able to push through our ideas during this mandate”.

GERB leader Boyko Borissov chose to speak to the press in Plovdiv, where his party's candidate won a clear victory, and appeared content with GERB's overall performance. He said that where they lost, they lost against coalitions, and accused the power-sharing CC of forming unprincipled local coalitions with the nationalist Vazrazhdane.

Socialist leader Korneliya Ninova told a news briefing that they are "extremely happy" with the election results.  

As at 4 p.m. on Sunday, the voter turnout was 26.40%, Central Election Commission Deputy Chair and Spokesperson Rossitsa Mateva told a briefing. It was lowest in the Danubian city of Ruse, at 15.77%, and highest in the northern town of Roman, at 77.94%, she said. In Sofia, it was 23.72%.

As at 5 p.m., machine voting was officially discontinued in 48 polling stations, 11 of which in Sofia Municipality.