Vasil Terziev won the race for mayor of Sofia, GERB won the second city of Plovdiv and most regional cities. This is indicated by the first data from the exit polls of various sociological agencies, BGNES reported.
"We Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria" -"Save Sofia" (WCC-DB-SS) candidate Vasil Terziev will most likely be the new mayor of the capital, after defeating his opponent Vanya Grigorova. He gets 49.7%, and Vanya Grigorova - 43.8%, according to Alpha data Research.
In the second largest city, GERB's candidate Kostadin Dimitrov /51.5% won convincingly over Ivaylo Staribratov /39.1%/ from WCC-DB.
GERB candidates Daniel Panov /51.7%/ and Valentin Hristov also won in Veliko Tarnovo and Pleven.
In Ruse and Blagoevgrad, the old mayors were elected, the first is Pencho Milkov, supported by BSP /62.2%/, and the second, supported by GERB-UDF (editor's note: Union of Democratic Forces) Ilko Stoyanov. In Haskovo, GERB's Stanislav Dechev won with 60.3%.
The most disputed is the battle for Varna, where the difference between the current mayor Ivan Portnich /43.9%/ from GERB and Blagomir Kotsev /48.5%/ from WCC-DB is very small. Our Black Sea capital is also the only city in the country where the intrigue of who will rule will be preserved until the last.
The latest Central Election Commission (CEC) data on voter turnout is from 4:00 p.m. At that time, 26.4% went to the polls. According to the data on the activity of the sociological agency "Trend" at 18:00 in Sofia, 31.3% voted. Almost everywhere, voter turnout is lower than in the first round.
Politicians voted for a modern, European and democratic capital, and mayoral candidates in some of the other cities voted against hidden businesses and corporate interests in their cities, and for honest and transparent governance.
Vasil Terziev voted by machine. He promised that there would be no more "my mayor, your mayor". Sofia suffers from favoritism, Terziev believes.
Vanya Grigorova voted for a city free from corporate dependencies. She votes by paper ballot because she thinks voting technology doesn't matter at all.
Prime Minister Academician Nikolay Denkov stated that after the elections, the question of trust in the electoral process should be raised. According to him, the problems with the machines are the result of poor coordination between the institutions.
GERB leader Boyko Borisov emphasized that the election was held last week. "I see that machines break down mainly in Sofia and Varna. This is one of the schemes, if the machine supposedly breaks and there is a duplicate somewhere, they will scroll through the receipts," he warned.
The co-chairman of WCC-DB Kiril Petkov appreciated the right decision of Boyko Borisov, who supported their candidate for the capital. He voted not to compare Sofia with Moscow or Troyan.
DB leader Hristo Ivanov believes that this vote will determine the direction of the country's development. According to him, the machine voting has preserved the trust of the citizens.
BSP leader Kornelia Ninova, who voted with a paper ballot, emphasized that the low voter turnout was a bad sign. This apathy makes institutions weakly legitimate.
In today's elections, we voted for 91 mayors of municipalities, 451 of town halls and 31 of districts. We voted in 7,250 precincts, including 5,900 machine precincts. In the runoff, 6,380,052 voters have the right to vote. /BGNES
