Bulgaria’s 2013 elections: GERB has shed support but leads BSP by close to 10%, poll says
Boiko Borissov’s GERB party has shed some support, but at 28.3 per cent continues to be ahead of the Bulgarian Socialist Party’s 18.7 per cent, according to a poll done between April 19 and 23 by the MBMD agency in connection with Bulgaria’s May 12 national parliamentary elections.
Over a month, the socialists have increased their support, from 15.6 per cent in March. Support for GERB in March was 30.1 per cent, according to MBMD.
The controversies that are characterising the parliamentary election campaign, notably the saga of alleged illegal eavesdropping, has been a benefit to a number of small parties, that are coming close to be able to get over the threshold for seats in Parliament, according to MBMD.
The poll said that the Movement for Rights and Freeydoms had 5.2 per cent support, Volen Siderov’s Ataka 5.2 per cent and Meglena Kouneva’s Bulgaria for Citizens 4.1 per cent. All three of these parties had made slight gains.
The timing of the poll means that it took place after the April 15 announcement by the Prosecutor-General’s office of its findings in the initial investigation into allegations of illegal eavesdropping, but before the April 26 leak of conversations between Borissov, former minister Miroslav Naidenov and Sofia city prosecutor Nikolai Kokinov. In regard to these conversations, Kokinov has resigned and faces an ethics investigation while Naidenov and Borissov are to be questioned by prosecutors.
