Elezioni nazionali in Bulgaria – Exit Poll

So good or bad?

Just great, we kick Orban away just for gaining a Bulgarian russian bootlicker as PM 🙄

We need to cancel the Veto option and the unanimity vote in favour of a majority one asap!

My wife is Bulgarian, soI have spent the last few years watching her and her family absolutely lose their minds over the fact that they have had to head to the polls for a seventh or eighth time in half a decade.

For the average Bulgarian, this is not some high level geopolitical chess match. It is just pure, exhausting burnout. You see the exit polls showing Radev taking 40 percent and a lot of people in the West immediately jump to the “pro-Russian Trojan Horse” headline. They are not wrong about his policies, but that ignores the real story here.

The average person I talk to in Sofia is not voting for Radev because they want to cozy up to Moscow. They are voting for him because they are genuinely desperate for the lights to stay on, for the cost of living to stop spiraling, and for a government that lasts longer than a carton of milk. They have been stuck with the same “oligarchic pyramid” of the same three or four guys for thirty years, and Radev is successfully playing the role of the outsider who is finally going to smash the machine.

That is the dangerous trap Bulgaria is in right now. When you let a political system rot from the inside with corruption for decades, the public eventually gets so apathetic and tired that they stop caring about the broader geopolitical consequences of who they vote for. They just want a strong man who promises to clean house.

I really hope he follows through on his rhetoric about a functional government, but the cynical part of me knows that if he starts acting like the next Orbán, he is just going to trade one set of oligarchs for another. It is heartbreaking to see a country with so much potential just spinning its wheels like this.

Can a knowledgeable Bulgarian user perhaps explain why a rather small country like Bulgaria has so many elections? What causes this instability? Usually smaller countries tend to be more stable.  

Here is a statement for all the “next Orban” comments in here.

Firstly, Radev doesn’t have nearly the level of support Orban had. He can’t even form a functional goverment unless he forms a coalition with either 1 of his 2 main adverseries or a coalition with 2-3 other parties, so right off the bat he is restricted on much he can do.

Secondly, he is an old school type socialists from the old guard. While I mislike his “both sides” and “neutrality” rhetoric, I don’t fully belive in the conspiracy that he is a russian asset. He may genuinely belive he is doing the right thing. It’s no guarantee that he will turn out like Orban.

So please stop with the fearmongering. We probably won’t see a goverment form in the first place.

Why people are so pessimistic? DPS, SP and PB – coalition is ready.

Note this is 1 of 3 exit polls released and this is one with the lowest support for PB. One has PB at 38+ and the other 39+. The higher PB gets, the closer they get to a majority without the need of any coalition partner.

The party to watch is the BSP (the old school socialist). While all 3 exit polls show them making it into the assembly, they are right at the threshold (4%).

We have 240 seats in Parlaments so far PB gets 105, hopefully with the not counted votes they drop few seats so they cannot have a majority. If BSPOL is under 4% and does not get into parliament we have 2 options with coalition with the pro EU parties or 9th election.