Bulgarian elections 2014: Poll sees strong GERB victory, 7 parties in Parliament
Just less than two weeks before Bulgaria’s October 5 2014 early parliamentary elections, a poll by the Exacta Research Group says that Boiko Borissov’s centre-right GERB party has 36.5 per cent support, well ahead of the second-ranked Bulgarian Socialist Party which has 20.2 per cent.
The poll, the results of which were released on September 23, indicates that seven parties could have seats in Bulgaria’s unicameral Parliament, the National Assembly, after the elections.
The former ruling axis partner the Movement for Rights and Freedoms was third at 11.9 per cent, the centre-right Reformist Bloc fourth at 7.3 per cent, followed by Georgi Purvanov’s socialist splinter ABC at 5.3 per cent, and with Nikolai Barekov’s populist Bulgaria Without Censorship and the ultra-nationalist Patriotic Front with 5.2 per cent each.
Those who intended voting for GERB were highly motivated and the party had a committed voter base, according to the pollsters.
The MRF, the party led and supported in the main by Bulgarians of Turkish ethnicity, had 96 per cent of those who voted for it in the May 2013 early national parliamentary elections intending to so again in October 2014.
The percentage of those polled who said that they definitely intended to vote had risen from 50 per cent in Exacta’s previous poll, on September 10, to 55 per cent on September 20.
Those who intended exercising a preferential vote, to rearrange the places of candidates on the electoral list of the party of their choice, had increased over the same period from 25 to 31 per cent.
Most of those who intended using a preferential vote were urban-dwellers, better educated and better off, the pollsters said.
According to Exacta, the poll was conducted using its own funds.
