site.btaMyara Poll: 63.2% Think October 2024 General Elections Were Not Free and Fair

According to an opinion poll presented here on Wednesday, only 16.5% of respondents think the October 27 parliamentary elections were rather free and fair, as opposed to 63.2%. The remaining share of respondents are unsure.Those who believe the elections were free and fair are supporters of the election winner, GERB.

The survey was conducted by the Myara polling agency as part of their independent research programme through face-to-face interviews between March 6 and 14. A total of 808 adult Bulgarians participated, with 1% of them being representative of some 54,000 citizens.

The attitudes towards the Central Election Commission is negative among 52.3% of the respondents and positive among 19.9%, the rest are unsure. The Constitutional Court is viewed negatively by 37.2% and positively by 30.2%, and 32.6% are unsure.

The results indicate a preference for machine voting. Asked to choose between voting only by paper, only by machine or both, the biggest share of respondents (36.9%) selected machine voting, followed by both options (30.1%) and paper ballots (17.3%). When asked to choose only one option: voting by machine or by paper, 52.5% chose machine voting and 22.8% chose paper ballots, while the rest were unsure. The pollsters noted that age plays a role here, not just party preferences, with younger and economically active respondents preferring machine voting.