Bulgaria: Voting Intentions Two Days before Election

GERB's lead over the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) has increased to just over 8 points. Near the end of the campaign for the April 4 parliamentary elections, GERB gets  28.1 per cent support among firm voters. The BSP remains in
second place with 19.8 per cent, but the data show a gradual ebb of supporters.

These data come from an Alpha Research poll at the end of the election campaign, published on Thursday. The survey was
conducted on March 27-30 among 1,007 adult Bulgarians.

According to the sociologists, the BSP is most seriously affected by concerns about voting amid a pandemic (25 per cent of BSP supporters expressed strong concern, compared to an average of 10 per cent nationwide). On the other hand, some BSP supporters are switching preferences to other anti-government formations, mostly "Rise Up! Thugs Out!''.

The next two political formations have similar poll results: There Is Such a People (TISP) gets 12.7 per cent and Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) 12.5 per cent. The final results for both parties will be highly dependent on the voter turnout on April 4. The support for Slavi Trifonov's TISP party is based mostly on an emotional, anti-systemic vote by people who are not particularly interested in politics, which means that they can easily become active, but can just as easily be demotivated and choose not to participate because they do not have a special stake in the election. According to the analysts, a lower voter turnout would place the MRF at an advantage. Alpha Research says that polls do not take into account the votes cast abroad, and that the MRF traditionally receives a lot of votes from the Bulgarian diaspora.

Both Democratic Bulgaria (6.3 per cent) and Rise Up! Thugs...