Exacta April 2018 poll: Bulgarian PM Borissov’s GERB 24.5%, BSP 20.5%
Fifty-six per cent of Bulgarians do not want early parliamentary elections now, according to a poll by the Exacta Research Group in April 2018.
Were early elections held, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov’s centre-right GERB party would get 24.5 per cent of the vote and Kornelia Ninova’s opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party 20.5 per cent, according to the Exacta poll, done between April 12 and 18 among 1000 adults in 89 cities, towns and villages.
The Movement for Rights and Freedoms, currently the fourth-largest group in the National Assembly, would be in third place with 6.1 per cent, and the United Patriots – a grouping of far-right and ultra-nationalist parties that is the minority partner in Borissov’s government – would get 5.5 per cent.
Such a Parliament would have only four groups. The current fifth group and the smallest in the National Assembly, Vesselin Mareshki’s Volya, would not win any seats in Parliament were elections to be held now.
Currently, the Reformist Bloc and Democratic Bulgaria, the latter a recently-formed coalition largely around minority parties in which reformist and former justice minister Hristo Ivanov is a prominent leader, would not win seats in Parliament.
Of BSP voters, 53 per cent want early parliamentary elections. Of the 27 per cent of all of those polled who want early elections, close to half said that they would vote for a new party, Exacta said.
There was a high level of support for Bulgaria’s membership of the European Union, at 74 per cent. Such support has been durable in recent years, ranging from 74 to 79 per cent.
The group with the highest disapproval of Bulgaria’s EU membership was BSP voters, at 28 per cent.
Approval for Bulgaria’s Nato membership has fallen to between 55 per cent and 60 per cent in recent years, with disapproval between 22 per cent and 28 per cent. In April 2018, 58 per cent of Bulgarians approved of the country’s membership of Nato, while about 25 per cent disapproved. Forty per cent of BSP voters do not approve of Bulgaria being a Nato member.
Forty per cent of those polled expected that Bulgaria would benefit from its current holding of the rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU, while 34 per cent did not believe that it would benefit.
However, the ratings in this respect were highly politicised, Exacta said.
Among supporters of the ruling majority, the view prevailed that Bulgaria would benefit from the EU Presidency, while supporters of the opposition expected no benefits.
(Photo of the Bulgarian National Assembly in Sofia: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)
