site.btaPopulist Parties in Bulgaria Supported by Less Than 20% of Voters in 2023 - Authoritarian Populism Index 2024

Support for populist parties in Bulgaria in 2023 was below 20%, according to the Authoritarian Populism Index 2024. It was published by Timbro and EPICENTER earlier this week and was released in Bulgarian by the Institute for Market Economics on Wednesday. The survey covers all elections held in 31 countries from 1945 to 2023.

Last year, support for authoritarian parties in Europe stood at 26.9%, the survey shows. Although this is the historically highest level of support for them, it was first reached in 2019 and did not mark further growth in the next four years.

The five countries in Europe with the highest support for populist and/or authoritarian parties were Hungary (60%), Italy (over 50%), France (just under 50%), Greece and Poland (both nearly 45%). The five countries with the least support for such parties were Croatia, (around 14%), Luxembourg (around 13%), Portugal (around 12%), the UK (less than 4%), and Malta (less than 2%).

Electoral support for national conservative parties remained very high, having increased steadily since 1990. Their average support in 2023 was 13.9%, just below the 14.1% recorded in 2022.

While support for right-wing authoritarianism/populism continues to grow, there has been a steady decline in support for the radical left in recent years. These parties may have failed to maintain the momentum they gained after the 2008 financial crisis, the survey notes.

In 2023, electoral support for the liberal parties reached an all-time high, at 12.3%. The growth of support for them has been constant since 2010.

As of March 2024, populist and/or authoritarian parties were part of eight governments in Europe: Hungary, Italy, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia, Finland, Switzerland and Romania. This was the lowest level of participation in governments since 2014, with similar formations in 15 countries in 2019.

Bulgaria ranked ninth among the EU countries with relatively low level of support for this type of parties, the survey shows. However, the total share of votes for authoritarian and populist parties in the country, calculated according to the index's methodology, has grown significantly over the past decade, reaching almost 1/5 of all votes in parliamentary elections in the middle of last decade. In recent years, Vazrazhdane’s rise has brought another increase, with the latest edition estimating that the share of populism in the country reached 17% in 2023.

Here is what the Authoritarian Populism Index 2024 says about Bulgaria: 

During the first post-communist decade, Bulgaria appeared to be moving towards a two-party system, dominated by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) – a direct successor to the Bulgarian Communist Party – and Union of Democratic Forces– the broad centre-right coalition. The stability was broken in 2001 when a brand new anti-establishment party, former king Simeon II’s National Movement for Stability and Progress – populist but centre-oriented – won over 42% of the vote. It was the start of a constant reshuffle in Bulgarian party politics, wherein each election has resulted in new parties entering parliament and old ones leaving as well as consistently high levels of volatility while rendering government formation more and more difficult.

In the 2020s, Bulgarian politics entered its most turbulent phase yet. From the spring of 2021 to the spring of 2023, no less than five parliamentary elections have been held (three in 2021, one in 2022, and one in 2023). No stable government could be formed after the first four elections, at the pace of ever-increasing polarization.

Despite being the largest party in the April 2021 election, GERB – a conservative party that, in 2013, became the first to win two elections consecutively and whose leader, Boyko Borissov, has been prime minister for three terms (2009–2013, 2014–2017, 2017–2021) – was unable to form a government. Instead, a re-election was called for just two months later in which the newly formed There Is Such a People, (TISP) – an antiestablishment party that combines anti-corruption messages with economic right-wing policies and some conservative viewpoints – became the largest party. TISP refused to cooperate with any other party, which is why a third election had to be called in the same year. In the November 2021 elections, TISP lost almost two-thirds of its voter support. Instead, yet another newly formed liberal party, Continue the Change (CC), won the election with 25% of the vote. CC eventually formed a government with the BSP, the liberal-conservative Democratic Bulgaria (DB) and, despite previous resistance, TISP. However, this government did not last. In June 2022, TISP left after a conflict over the country’s relationship with North Macedonia.

As the report does not take into account the latest developments in Bulgaria, it says that the country currently has a “coalition government” between CC-DB and GERB-UDF, which was formed after the 2023 election. After the 2023 elections, the two coalitions made an arrangement, according to which their representatives were to rotate as prime minister and deputy prime minister over a nine-month period. However, the regular government resigned on March 6 and was replaced by a caretaker government which is currently in office.

“This fragile centre-right alliance was based on common opposition to the pro-Kremlin President Rumen Radev as well as a common goal of Bulgaria’s entrance into the eurozone. In November 2023, the GERB suffered heavy losses in the local elections, including losing the mayoral position in cities such as Sofia and Varna, which further increased the strain on the government,” the report says about the former regular cabinet.

Authoritarian Populism Index 2024’s overview of the Bulgarian political scene in the last few decades continues as it follows: 

Bulgaria has seen a steady flow of nationalist and far-right parties in the 2000s. The first with any success was Ataka, a far-right party that was formed in 2005 by TV journalist Volen Siderov. Ataka won 8% of the vote in the 2005 election and 9% in 2009, while Siderov finished second in the presidential elections in 2006. At the time, the party was given a fair share of international attention. It still stands as a solid representation of Bulgarian ultra-nationalism, with all successors following pretty much the same formula: uncompromising rhetoric against the establishment (most opponents are dismissed as “traitors”) and hate speech against minorities, especially the Romani, the Turks, and the Muslims. Ataka MP Magdalena Tasheva compared refugees from Syria with monkeys and called them “savages”, “scum” and “mass murderers”.

Ataka has been a staunch opponent of the country’s NATO membership which came into effect in 2004. It is fiercely pro-Russian – a legacy dating back to Russian support for Bulgaria’s independent movement in the nineteenth century – even wanting to annul the post–World War I peace treaty which forced Bulgaria to cede territory to the former Yugoslavia. Siderov has also systematically promoted conspiracy theories. Further, Ataka wants to give the orthodox church a central role in politics. Economically, the party is left-wing, arguing for the nationalization of banks and laws against foreigners buying agricultural land.

During the 2010s, the radical right split into several factions. Ataka, which had been a supporting party in parliament for GERB, saw its voter support halved in the 2014 election when two other nationalist parties with similar ideology and policies – the VMRO and the National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria (NFSB) – entered parliament. VMRO, a national conservative party which claims the legacy of a nineteenth-century nationalist organization of the same name (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization), was formed in 1991. Similar to Ataka, this party promotes hate speech against the Romani and Turkish minorities, a campaign it describes as ‘a fight against gypsyfication’. It is also strongly critical of LGBTQ rights and gender theories. The NFSB was established in 2011 when Ataka split following a conflict between Siderov and Valeri Simeonov, who then became the founder and party leader of the NFSB.

In the 2017 election, all three radical right parties came together in an electoral alliance that won just over 9% of the vote. After the election, these three parties, (Ataka, NFSB, and VMRO), entered a coalition government with GERB. VMRO leader Krasimir Karakachanov became deputy prime minister and was given the responsibility for internal security. Ataka left the government in 2019, while the other two parties remained until 2021.

Reload Bulgaria (RB) is a rightwing populist party that entered parliament in 2014 but was voted out three years later. In the 2014 EP elections, it allied with VMRO, which enabled it to receive representation in the EP in 2014–2019. NFSB eventually joined forces with Volya, which was formed back in 2007 under a different name. Politically, Volya is closer to other national conservative parties. It entered parliament in 2017, giving confidence and supply to the government, but failed to re-enter in 2021. The national conservative and pro-Russian Bulgarian Rise won representation in the 2022 elections but was voted out a year later.

Ataka received 0.5% votes in all three elections in 2021 and appears to be out of the political scene after having held seats in every parliament since 2005. In the 2023 election, it joined in a pro-Russian alliance with, among others, the remnants of the Bulgarian Communist Party, but the voter support remained around 0.5%.

However, the downward trend of the radical right was broken in the early 2020s by yet another new party, Vazrazhdane, which has become the most successful far-right party in post-communist Bulgaria. Vazrazhdane was formed in 2014 by its current Chair Kostadin Kostadinov. Kostadinov had earlier been a member of NFSB and VMRO but left the two nationalist parties since he found them too moderate. Vazrazhdane was founded on August 2, i.e., on the day of the 1903 Ilinden Uprising against the Ottoman Empire – an event of great symbolic value for Bulgarian nationalists. Kostadinov has written several books, including a textbook for elementary school, on Bulgarian history and nationalism. With its harsh antiziganism and fascist features, Vazrazhdane hardly qualifies as a democratic party. Kostadinov himself was once arrested after allegedly having led a gang of skinheads in a violent attack on a Romani community.  In 2013, after a flood in Varna killed ten people, he claimed no one from the Romani community volunteered to provide aid and described them as “parasites” and “non-human vermin”.

Elena Guncheva, Kostadinov’s running mate in the presidential elections in 2021, has said that Jewish candidates were “only guests” in the country: “this is the land of Bulgarians”. During the pandemic, the party organized demonstrations against the government’s COVID measures. In January 2022, it tried to storm the National Assemly.

It also spread conspiracy theories regarding both the pandemic and COVID vaccines. Vazrazhdane is strongly anti-EU, anti-NATO, and pro-Russian. The party has called for a referendum on withdrawing from NATO and the EU. Kostadinov has claimed that “everything is determined by Kozyak [the street of the US embassy in Sofia]” and wants to “normalize” relations with Putin’s Russia. At party events, Russian flags and t-shirts featuring Putin are seen often. The party is active on social media and known for spreading pro-Russian views. Kostadinov has said that the “Russophobic garbage” should be “exterminated like pest”.

Like every far-right party in Bulgaria, Vazrazhdane is left-leaning when it comes to economic policy with demands for the nationalization of large companies, increased pensions, minimum wages, etc. It is conservative on social issues, promising to uphold Christian values and ‘the traditional Bulgarian family’.

EP Elections

Ataka won three seats in the EP in 2007 It became a founding member of the short-lived nationalist group Tradition, Sovereignty with the French National Front. Ataka lost its seats in the first Bulgarian EP elections in 2007 but gained two seats in the 2009 elections. Both Attack MEPs were non-inscrits and failed to re-enter the EP in 2014.

For the 2014 elections, Renew Bulgaria and VMRO formed an electoral coalition and were thus able to win two seats, both representatives joining the ECR group. VMRO’s MEP Angel Dzhambazki has been subject to a long list of accusations, including hate speech towards the Jewish, Romani, and LGBT people. Dzhambazki was re-elected in 2019, together with another MEP from VMRO. They both continued in ECR.