The final official results of the presidential elections in Bulgaria on 6 November have not been released yet, though the inconclusive results clearly show the run-off elections will be neck-and-neck and will be taking place in a political situation that is completely changed.

Any speculation of an outright victory for the GERB party candidate Tsetska Tsacheva at the first round of elections was proved utterly wrong; she is in the lead in just three regions. Her rival, Bulgarian Socialist Party-supported Rumen Radev came first in 20 out of 28 regions and for the first time since 1990, a socialist candidate has come out first in Sofia. In Sofia, the ruling GERB party is the second political force, though the Reformist Bloc candidate Traicho Traikov is just one percent behind, showing that the right are in the process of regaining their positions in the capital city.

Some say that the results of the first round of presidential elections are an indication of a significant change in the balance of political forces in the country. The election results of the candidate of the “United Patriots” Krasimir Karakachanov – he came third after Radev and Tsacheva – come to corroborate such a theory. The results of another, independent candidate also seem to point in that direction – Veselin Mareshki, who unexpectedly shot up to first place in his home town of Varna and to fourth position nationwide. And what would happen if the man who initiated a referendum on the political system, Slavi Trifonov were to set up a party of his own and stand in the next elections for parliament? Trifonov has not said he would do so as yet, though the fact that millions voted in the referendum he initiated would not allow him to reject such a step outright, so he has been making cryptic remarks that he would do “whatever is necessary”.

But, unlike the elections for parliament, the elections for president are majority-based rather than proportional and making a direct connection between the two would be tantamount to comparing apples and oranges. PM Borissov may well be right when he says that although his party’s candidate came second in the first round of elections for president, the ruling party, GERB, is still the top political force because the candidate who won the first round, Rumen Radev, was not actually nominated by the Bulgarian Socialist Party but by an initiative committee, with only the support of the socialists. The fact that votes for him were cast not only by socialist sympathizers, but even by GERB-sympathizers is something he himself admits to. This is something the Bulgarian Socialist Party is well aware of, that is the reason why its leader Kornelia Ninova has stubbornly been avoiding answering questions about parliamentary elections and has only been commenting on the stakes at the presidential runoff.

But at this point it would be difficult to try and predict even the outcome of the presidential runoff. Who could say, for example, which way the votes of the United Patriots sympathizers will go, seeing as their own candidate in the first round Krasimir Karakachanov clearly stated he could not advise anyone to vote for either of the two candidates? Still, we can expect some of the “patriot” votes to be cast for GERB’s candidate Tsetska Tsacheva because some of them support GERB in the executive branch. The reformists say that in the runoff they shall give their support to the GERB party candidate, though for some of them, that does not hold good. The ballots cast for Movement for Rights and Freedoms-supported Plamen Oresharski in the first round will, to some degree of certainty, go in favour of the socialist-supported candidate, though that too is by no means certain. One reason is that there is no way of knowing whether the turnout in the runoff will run as high as in the first round after the inevitable disappointment and the long queues in front of polling stations. The host of uncertainties after the first round of presidential elections makes any forecast regarding the final outcome at the upcoming runoff a next to impossible challenge. To such an extent, that it would probably be best not to make any predictions until 13 November.

English version: Milena Daynova