Market Links poll: GERB-UDF has strong lead ahead of Bulgaria’s early elections
Among those who intend voting in Bulgaria’s latest early parliamentary elections, to be held on October 27, Boiko Borissov’s GERB-UDF coalition has 21.9 per cent support, according to a poll by the Market Links agency, the results of which were reported by bTV on August 28.
In the second place is the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) with 15.4 per cent, followed by the reformist We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria coalition with 14.3 per cent, pro-Kremlin party Vuzrazhdane 11.5 per cent and the Bulgarian Socialist Party 6.2 per cent.
The current Parliament’s two smallest parties, nationalist-populist Veliche and populist ITN are below the threshold of four per cent to win seats, both at 3.2 per cent.
Of those who intend voting, 16.3 per cent are undecided.
Market Links’s Dobromir Zhivkov told bTV that the agency had measured the MRF as a single entity, as it had done for years.
The MRF has been strife-torn for months, with a contest for control between parliamentary group leader Delyan Peevski and founder and honorary president Ahmed Dogan. The night before the poll results were released, Dogan said that Peevski had been expelled from the party, a move that Peevski rejected.
Zhivkov said that should two formations emerge from the current MRF “we will change the way we ask the question”.
“But for now, we measure the aggregate score of MRF. It probably won’t be the same in the upcoming elections,” he said
He said that the result of the MRF in the new survey was one of the highest of the party and this was probably due to the mobilization of both factions.
Confidence in the 50th National Assembly, which will continue to work until the new one is sworn in, is very low, at about seven per cent.
Zhivkov said that such a record low level of trust in Parliament has been a fact since the 48th National Assembly.
He said that there was little hope that the October 27 elections would see voter turnout higher than the record low set in the previous elections, of 34.41 per cent.
The poll was carried out and funded by Market Links and bTV, and was conducted among 1038 people over the age of 18 from August 14 to 23, using direct interviews and online polling.
(Photo: parliament.bg)
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