Bulgaria’s 2013 elections: Parallel vote count gives GERB 30.9%, BSP 25.8 %
The parallel vote count carried out Alpha Research polling agency in Bulgaria’s May 12 2013 elections showed Boiko Borissov’s party, GERB, as having got 30.9 per cent of the vote and the Bulgarian Socialist Party-led Coalition for Bulgaria as having 25.8 per cent.
The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) had 11.5 per cent and Volen Siderov’s ultra-nationalists Ataka 6.9 per cent, according to the parallel vote count, based on the results in 50 per cent of the 200 voting precincts used by the agency as a sample to extrapolate the overall results.
In a separate parallel vote count by Sova Harris agency, based on 62.2 per cent of the results from their sample group of voting precincts, GERB was credited with 30.6 per cent of the vote and the socialist-led coalition with 25.8 per cent, followed by MRF with 13.2 per cent and Ataka and 7.2 per cent.
Extrapolations from the Alpha Research parallel count give GERB 99 seats out of the 240 seats in the National Assembly, the socialists 82, the MRF 37 and Ataka 22.
The Sova Harris count gave GERB 96 seats, the socialists 81, the MRF 41 and Ataka 22.
These were separate efforts from the parallel vote count that was ordered by parties who had telegraphed their suspicions about the veracity of the official process in which results are reported by the Central Election Commission, and, to a lesser extent, a lengthy controversy in Bulgaria about the credibility of exit polls by polling agencies.
That parallel count was agreed on by the Bulgarian Socialist Party, Movement for Rights and Freedoms, Ataka, Meglena Kouneva’s Bulgaria for Citizens and the Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria coalition. That count is scheduled to be based on a larger sample group of 600 voting precincts.
For several months, the socialists have been alleging that Borissov’s party would manipulate the elections and that official results could not be relied on.
(Illustration: Billy Alexander/sxc.hu)
