Bulgaria’s April 2026 elections: Strong voter turnout as polls head to a close
With a few hours left before polls were due to close in Bulgaria’s April 19 early parliamentary elections, the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) said that voter turnout at 4pm was 34.6 per cent, outdoing the 26.25 per cent recorded by the CEC at the same time in the October 2024 parliamentary elections.
As of the late afternoon of April 19, increased voter turnout compared with the October 2024 elections was reported in numerous places in Bulgaria, as well as at many polling stations abroad.
In Bulgaria, election day saw mild to warm spring weather, sunny in the western part of the country and partly cloudy in the east, meaning relatively pleasant weather conditions for going to the polling stations.
According to Bulgaria’s national meteorological bureau, at 3pm, the temperature in Sofia was 18 degrees Celsius and in Plovdiv, 21 degrees. At the coast, temperatures at that hour were in the 15 to 16 degree range.
Whether Bulgaria’s April 2026 parliamentary elections achieve record voter turnout among the eight votes for the legislature in the past five years remains to be seen.
In April 2021’s parliamentary elections, final voter turnout, as of 8pm, was 49.1 per cent; in July 2021, 41.63 per cent; in November 2021, 38.4 per cent; in October 2022, 39.3 per cent; in April 2023, 40.51 per cent; in June 2024, 34.43 per cent; and in October 2024, 38.94 per cent.
Problems with some voting machines were reported throughout the course of April 19, leading in some cases to voting being done using only paper ballots. However, the E-government Ministry downplayed this, saying that the malfunctioning machines represented only a tiny percentage – about 0.5 per cent – of the total.
Interior Ministry chief secretary Georgi Kandev said that as of 1pm, a total of 181 reports of violations of election legislation had been received by the ministry. Thirteen pre-trial proceedings had been initiated.
“As the end of election day approaches, vote buyers will become more active, but let it be known that the Ministry of Interior is prepared and will not allow this to happen,” Kandev told a briefing.
Voting is scheduled to end at 8pm, but the law allows this to be extended to 9pm if there are still people in queues waiting to vote.
By law, exit polls may be published only from 8pm, but some media cited figures via social networks, without identifying the source of the purported figures. At least one media flouted the law entirely by publishing exit polling on its website.
Caretaker Interior Minister Emil Denchev has promised that just after 8pm, he will publicly identify parties involved in vote-buying. If he takes that step, such an announcement would be unprecedented in Bulgaria’s elections.
(Photo: Caretaker Prime Minister Andrei Gyurov votes on April 19, using a machine: goverment.bg)
