Bulgarian presidential election - November 6, 2016

[Famous Mortimer]

Just as with previous Bulgarian elections, I am sweeping in to start a thread before any of the Bulgarian posters have a chance.

Election for the figurehead president on November 6, with a run-off will be held November 13th if no one gets 50%+1.

The major candidates are:

Tsetska Tsacheva, the female speaker of the parliament and candidate of the ruling corruption-based conservative party GERB.

Rumen Radev, an air force military dude independent who is backed by the main opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party. Why is the BSP afraid to run actual party members now?

Ivaylo Kalfin, former foreign minister who was the candidate of the BSP in the last election but is now the candidate of the Alternative for Bulgarian Renewal, crappy BSP breakaway party led by former president Georgi Parvanov.

Krasimir Karakachanov, deputy speaker of the parliament and member of the far right Patriotic Front party. Also backed by the far right Attack party. The alliance of the Patriotic Front and Attack is called "United Patriots".

Traycho Traykov, former minister of economy and former member of the ruling GERB party who is now the candidate of the Western style conservative alliance the Reformist Bloc.

Plamen Oresharski, former Prime Minister who when he was Prime Minister was nominated by the BSP, even though he's an independent. That's why I was saying what's the deal with the BSP never nominating members anymore.

George Ganchev, former leader of the party Bulgarian Business Bloc, who has run before.

Aleksandar Tomov, former leader of the party Bulgarian Euro-left, who has run before.

lots of other people who I don't know how relevant they are.

Please Bulgarians, fill in the gaps and also tell us who you think will win.

[Beagle]

Goddam forrinurs stealin' our jobs. Volen Siderov told us this was going to happen, but did I listen? Did I listen? No.

So yes, we've got 2 weeks until the election, and it will be the second time in almost a decade where the victor is not preordained, so at least there's some suspense. I think I'll write a 3 post preview - the general lay of the land, the actual presidential race and also a post on the Electoral Rules Referendum Part 2: Electric Boogaloo, which will also take place on Nov 6th.

Just to dampen expectations for a free and fair election early on - this guy, who was our savior in the municipals last year:


Well, he got elected, but he's been really severely beaten up by several persons armed with baseball bats. Considering how popular baseball is here, I am rather shocked, shocked that the police have not yet caught the assailants.

[Famous Mortimer]

Looking forward to those posts.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Me either.

[Beagle]

I... I might need professional help. I've written 5 pages on this not very interesting election, and that's after scrapping the first 1500-odd words on the splits that have emerged in the parliamentary parties in the past 12 months and the various clientelist networks behind them. You're not missing much - just a dense wall of text that pretty much only die-hard Bulgarian politics fans, should such exist, would make sense of. It basically was a description of cabal, intrigue and corruption, so you may safely assume the worst and you’ll not be too far off. I can, however, share the “Bulgaria without Censorship” splinters’ description in its entirety: ‘lol’.

For readability/sanity reasons I will post the resulting text in several parts. The upcoming post will be about the two frontrunners - GERB's Tsacheva and BSP's Radev. The post after that will be about the others that have at least a modicum of a chance of becoming Bulgaria’s fifth President.



Side note: There is a tenuous assumption that a Bulgarian whose first and last name match (eg. John Jones) or with alliterative first and last names is coming, well, not from a ‘backward’ family, but at least from an ‘unhip’ one. Indeed, these frontrunners have not gone to the ‘elite’ high schools during Communism and are from humble backgrounds.

I will not bother with describing the vice-presidential candidates, as that institution is completely irrelevant and the only reason for its existence is that it is a vestige from the first draft of our modern Constitution, which foresaw a semi-presidential republic and it made sense to have a successor in place from the same ticket. It may be worth mentioning that only one of the five vice-presidents so far has finished their term on speaking terms with their running mate.  


 

[Beagle]

Tsetska Tsacheva – GERB

Background: Speaker of Parliament 2009-2013, 2014-pesent

I struggle to point out something remarkable about Tsacheva, who would have been a fairly ordinary lawyer in Pleven if she did not hop on the GERB bandwagon from the beginning of the party. She has shown political ambition from an early age, joining the Communists in university in 1982, moving to the United Democratic Forces after 1990, then in 2003 following the then Sofia mayor in his unsuccessful breakaway Union of Free Democrats. Tsacheva ran for mayor of Pleven as GERB’s candidate in the first election for the new party in 2007 against the UDF (current RB) incumbent in a vindictive personal campaign, but finished 3rd, while he won outright – a fairly poor result. She did not run in the rematch in 2011, but she pushed the GERB candidate to victory. The Roma village of Bukovlak in the vicinity of Pleven became a by-word for, uh, extraordinary results in 2011 – 85% turnout, 66% for the GERB candidate in the first round, 92% in the second. In 2015, new heights of civic enthusiasm were achieved – 96% turnout, 94% GERB in the first round, 99% in the second – but it still wasn’t enough to save the gaffe-ridden GERB incumbent. Her tenure as Speaker has been almost entirely free of controversy, she is known as a steadfast supporter of Borisov, who does as she’s told, but is still generally fair to the opposition.

Road to the nomination: In spite of any splits that may have emerged in GERB, their presidential nomination was always going to be decided by Boyko Borisov himself. He had settled on a shortlist of five early on, even before the incumbent had declared that he was not going to run again, but it’s almost certain that Tsacheva was his back-up choice in case he couldn’t convince the popular mayor of Sofia or EU commissioner to run. The two men in the shortlist – the deputy prime minister responsible for EU funds and the mayor of Burgas – were probably too independent for Borisov’s tastes and at least the latter was too unknown. In any event, Tsacheva was coming in fourth best in their private polling and there was a last ditch effort to have the Sofia mayor reconsider, but after waiting until the deadline to announce their candidate, GERB went with Tsacheva.

Campaign mantras: Stability, ‘Mother of the nation’, normality, unity… as safe and boring as possible

Why she will win: GERB, as a ruling party, has an extremely high floor, which guarantees a place in the run-off whoever their candidate is and it would be a shock if Tsacheva is not in first place (it would also trigger the government’s resignation if Borisov is to be believed). The GERB team will cover the most kms in the short campaign and will visit small towns and villages that usually never see ‘national’ politicians.  In the run-off, she’ll be the ‘pro-Western’ candidate, which is still the more popular position, if only marginally. Most importantly: GERB has the best funded campaign and for… reasons… the GERB campaign manager Tsvetanov, who is poised to replace Tsacheva as Speaker of Parliament should she win, will stop at nothing* to ensure her win.

* I feel I need to make a distinction here. While I, among others, often joke about the corrupt electoral process in Bulgaria, actual vote rigging – as in stuffed ballot boxes, falsified reports, electoral ‘tourists’ voting multiple times etc. – is exceedingly rare. Even with vote buying, on a national scale fraud does not amount to more than 2-4% of the votes – enough to move 3-6 MPs from one party to another, but usually not enough to change the results. It’s probably only coincidence that for four parliaments in a row (from 2001 to 2013) a change of 3-6 MPs would have made a massive difference to the government composition. Anyhow, officials’ incompetence has certainly had more of an effect on electoral results than their malfeasance.

Why she will not win: There is simply no way for an uninspiring candidate such as Tsacheva to win in the first round without manipulations on an unprecedented scale. History shows that run-offs are precarious for GERB candidates, when all other parties often unite against them. The only ‘natural’ second round voter flow for Tsacheva would be from the RB, but I cannot see her gaining more than 200k votes from there. There are always the minorities, of course… but the newest breakaway from the DPS, led by the 2012-2015 DPS leader Mestan, threw their support behind Tsacheva, making it difficult for the DPS proper to endorse her for the second round – not that they will hesitate to do so if the deal is good, but for many reasons it’s unlikely.

Side note: DPS support in the run-off is a fickle thing – in 2001 Parvanov got 400 000 votes from the predominantly Turkish/Roma DPS strongholds, which proved decisive in his upset win, in 2011, when the DPS had endorsed Kalfin, turnout in those regions was in the mid 20s in the second round and he got only around 100 000 votes from them  – had the DPS gone all out for him, he would have won, but at that time the DPS wanted to keep the door open for future cooperation open to GERB

In addition, as the face of an institution with 8% approval rate, Tsacheva cannot point to any personal accomplishments in her 6 years in office, so she is running on the successes of the executive. She is also hamstrung by her painfully anodyne campaign, her monotone speech pattern and a general feeling that she lacks the stature to be president, commander in chief, representative of the country on the world stage, etc.

Side note: There is a crude, barely translatable joke about the Bulgarian presidency, which goes along these lines: “The Bulgarian presidential plane crashes on an island. The tribal chief sets the surviving president a task: find the only male in a tent full of mosquitoes. Much to everyone’s surprise, the president emerges within 15 minutes triumphantly holding the male mosquito. ‘How?’, asks the chief. ‘Ah, it was easy. I entered the tent and started a solemn recitation of the Constution: how I am the President of the Republic of Bulgaria, Commander-in-chief of the armed forces, representative of the country on the world stage etc. and waited until I heard a mosquito say ‘Yeah, yeah, so blow me’”
 
Rumen Radev – independent, endorsed by the BSP

Background: Commander of the Bulgarian Air Force 2014-2016

A career military man, Radev should be a new breed of officer. As the pre-1989 military was organically Communist, the new civilian leadership decided that the next generation of commanders must have at least some Western education. Radev is a beneficiary of that policy, having spent a combined total of more than two years abroad, mostly at the Air University in Montgomery, AL.  By all accounts he has been a great pilot and an able leader. According to the people who have served under him, he has been the best commander the air force has had in the past 15 years, deftly asserting himself in budgetary negotiations, so that money was provided to keep more of the planes airworthy (at several points between 2006 and 2012 the airforce was down to 1 MiG-29 in flying condition) and pilots having more flight hours. Radev has always had a knack for publicity, holding a huge flying demonstration in 2014 in which he himself starred. Then in 2015 he abruptly resigned his commission in protest against the hapless defense minister (RB). After 3 hours, having gotten Borisov to promise a lot of improvements for the air force, he withdrew his resignation.

Road to the nomination: Kornelia Ninova, the new BSP leader, deposed her predecessor Mikov with a lot of acrimony and bitterness (Mikov, who is not privately wealthy, surely wishes he would have taken the 30000 levs that he was offered to not run again). Part of her leadership campaign was a closer cooperation with ABV, with a view to a possible reunion. So when Parvanov proposed running Radev as a joint candidate, she jumped at the opportunity – the air force general does not belong to any of the party factions, so nobody would be offended. The Socialists ran a perfunctory nomination process, but even though some would have preferred a party candidate, the independent Radev got their nomination. Then came the sudden split with ABV. I have no idea why it happened – the ABV people said everything was already agreed when they saw a presser on tv how the BSP was no longer willing to run a joint candidate. Ostensibly the reason was because ABV wanted equal billing with the BSP, while being a significantly smaller party, and that Parvanov had tried to impose a vice-presidential candidate (although the candidate in question was an inoffensive history professor, who had served with distinction as a BSP parliamentarian for many years). ABV is convinced the BSP 'took a dive' to help GERB, we'll see if this bears out. Anyway, Radev agreed to run as a BSP-only candidate.

Campaign mantras:  dignity, sovereignty, balanced foreign relations, “Stop replacing Bulgarians with refugees”, “Don’t let Bulgaria become the EU ghetto”

Side note: The BSP, alongside almost all other parties in the leftist/nationalist spectrum, are making a huge deal of the fact that the government has passed a program for the permanent settlement of up to 2000 refugees in depopulated small towns and villages. Apparently it is all a plan of a large conspiracy to replace the approximately 1.2 mil. people who have emigrated in the past 25 years with, and I quote, ‘Mujahideen with 4 wives and 20 children’. At the current rate, with 21 people having taken advantage of the program, by the year 14 000 or so we’ll all be replaced!  

Why he will win: Mostly because he’s not GERB. But also because for the first time in years the red barons have started spending again and his campaign has money.  Radev’s not an experienced campaigner, but he’s learned his stump speech well and he’s capable of throwing platitudes with the best of them. He’ll also never ever disagree with the audience during Q&A about anything ever. You’d think an air force chief would be able to talk some sense on that particular topic, but… nope, if he gets elected, he’ll look into the chemtrails issue, and if needed, he’s promised he’ll take action.
 
Why he will not win: The vaunted BSP turnout machine is gone – and, mostly, so are the people who were part of it. Radev is a blank slate and if GERB are successful, people’s projections can turn from mostly positive, as they are now, to sharply negative. As above though, if he loses, the main reason will be that GERB will pull out all the stops to win.

[Famous Mortimer]

Whoa whoa whoa. I definitely want to hear how Mikov fell and how the Parvanovites came back to power. I thought the ABV destroyed its credibility when they announced they would support a GERB government and then flipped flopped almost immediately.

[Famous Mortimer]

I am THE die-hard Bulgarian politics fan.

[Beagle]

Whoa whoa whoa. I definitely want to hear how Mikov fell and how the Parvanovites came back to power. I thought the ABV destroyed its credibility when they announced they would support a GERB government and then flipped flopped almost immediately.

Haha, well, at least I suppose those 8 hours I spent writing this will serve some purpose (it was really quiet at work this week).

I think an anonymous BSP-er at the party convention gave the best succinct and candid answer why Mikov fell: 'What use do we have for a leader who can't even fix his own election!' It was a chaotic party convention and the credentials committee had to deal with so many delegates that presented conflicting authorizations that at some point they must have let too many Mikov opponents through. It was relatively unexpected (and a close vote), but Ninova toppled Mikov in May on the basis of three things:
1. fear that the party will never be in power again as long as the principled Mikov was in charge. Ninova is a consummate power player who promised to close no doors on working with anyone, even GERB, if it meant that the BSP would get a chance to govern
2. while the base by and large stuck with their leader, the oligarchs who contribute to the party coffers were tired of the leftist rhetoric under Mikov. They probably would have swallowed the slogans against neoliberalism and austerity, but they didn't even bring in any of voters, as evidenced by the election results.
3. as far as I can tell (but I can easily be wrong here), Parvanov is still fairly popular with the BSP base. Ninova ran with the tacit blessing of Parvanov and the ABV left government precisely because she got elected (the BSP convention was on May 8th, Kalfin and the rest of the ABV appointments resigned on May 10th)

[Beagle]

Second installment in the Presidential candidates profiles


Krassimir Karakachanov – “United Patriots” coalition – Ataka, NFSB, VMRO

Background: VMRO party chairman – 1995-present, deputy speaker of parliament 2014-present

A historian by education, Karakachanov has been running the VMRO since he was 30. In that time the party has been in 3 out of 6 parliaments as part of various opportunistic coalitions, contributing their steady support of 1-2%. Under his leadership, the VMRO have come to be regarded as “soft nationalists” – their bark is certainly worse than their bite in comparison with their two current coalition partners. Karakachanov has said he’s proud of his past as a collaborator for the Communist State Security, as it was a part of his patriotic duty to report on the activities of pro-Macedonian/Serbian separatists in the southwest of Bulgaria.

Road to the nomination: An year ago it would have been miracle for the three nationalist parties to even sit down together. The briefest explanation is that Ataka have (for the time being) dropped their Putin cult, as they are positioning themselves to join with the NFSB and VMRO in supporting the GERB government should the remainder of the RB leave the coalition.

Campaign mantras: “Bulgaria über alles above all!”, sovereignty, reintroduction of conscription, “erect a wall at the Turkey border and stop the refugees by lethal force if need be”

Side note: Only the Volksgenossen ethnic Bulgarians would get to enjoy the barracks under the Karakachanov plan. Bulgarian Turks and Roma would be sent to the Labour Forces, where they would learn a trade, work on civic construction projects, be taught to speak and write Bulgarian if they are illiterate etc. It’s not something new for Bulgaria – in fact the original Labour forces predate the Communists.

Why he will win: He won’t. But the thinking goes like this: The combined vote of the three coalition parties between the 2011 presidential and the 2014 parliamentary elections is about 9-10%. In the past few elections, the BSP got between 15-19%. Assume that a third of the BSP supporters vote for Kalfin – unconvinced by the independent Radev or simply confused about who their candidate is. Also assume that another 1 or 2%, angry that the Socialists have dropped the anti-austerity campaign and are employing far-right rhetoric against the refugees, vote for extreme left candidates. Say 1% are convinced by Karakachanov personally, who has always been fairly leftist in his outlook on the economy, welfare and social justice. This would leave Karakachanov with 11-12%, Radev with 10-11% and Kalfin with 9-10%. In the run-off all the left, the protest voters and some of the “Old right” would coalesce behind Karakachanov in opposition to GERB.

Why he will not win: Even if he got into the run-off against Tsacheva, GERB + the minorities who would turn out in droves against Karakachanov easily will reach 50%. The nationalist parties and DPS may be in a symbiotic relationship, but surely even if the DPS did not organize them, the Turks and Roma will not stay passive against a perceived or real existential threat. Also, no credible far left candidate has emerged to siphon votes away from Radev and Kalfin.
 
Ivaylo Kalfin – ABV

Background: Deputy PM 2005-2009 and 2014-2016,  Labour Minister 2014-2016,Foreign Minister 2005-2009, BSP candidate for president 2011

Kalfin has been a fixture of Bulgarian politics for over a decade, but in all that time I never really understood what got him into politics. He doesn’t have the brash personality and overweening ambition that seem to define our successful politicians. He got swept in by the 1994 BSP landslide as a 30-year old economist. During the crisis of 1996-1997, he switched to the new “Euroleft” formation and was lucky enough to be elected one of its few MPs. After its collapse, he formed a new social-democratic party, but pretty soon got into Parvanov’s orbit, where he has been content to stay ever since. He was a personal appointment of Parvanov as foreign minister and after that as a MEP, so it’s perhaps natural that he was among the founders of ABV. Throughout his years in government, he has developed a reputation for moderation, competence and intelligence, which is also very rare among our successful politicians.

Road to the nomination: After being left standing at the altar, Parvanov felt he needed not only to run an ABV candidate against Radev, but to run the best possible candidate. The choice was clear: run himself! There was just one tiny problem - the constitutional ineligibility… So Kalfin, like a loyal foot soldier, had to prepare for a presidential campaign with a week’s notice.

Campaign mantras: A strong president (including revising the constitution to give him more powers), sovereignty, “The sun doesn’t rise in Washington and set in Brussels”

Why he will win: It’s extremely unlikely, but with support from the DPS (which was under discussion and may partially materialize), huge turnout swamping the GERB and BSP party bases and a lot of luck, Kalfin could make it to the second round. And if he makes it to the second round, he will be the favorite against Tsacheva.

Why he will not win:  No campaign infrastructure, no local support, mistrust by the BSP base who still haven’t forgotten he abandoned them in times of crisis… twice. Kalfin probably will have triple the support his party has in the polls – but the ABV support hovers in the 2-3% range.

[Beagle]

Installment 3 (of 5)

Three further candidates that have that have no chance of winning, so I will not present them in full, but will probably be in the Kalfin range:

Traycho Traykov - Reformist Block
Minister of Economy (2009-2012), Sofia municipal councilor (2015-present)

I think 'chinless wonder' might be the right expression to describe the public image Traykov has. He was given (somewhat against his will) the unenviable task of trying to unite the various factions of the RB behind his candidacy and also to peel off pro-Western GERB supporters who may be wavering in light of the Tsacheva candidacy and some... interesting recent observations by Boyko Borisov (for instance: "The Occidental countries must stop exporting democracy and apologize for the bombs and missiles they've dropped over Libya and Syria"). Obviously Traykov can't do that, but he'll have to get 200k votes, otherwise one more of the RB parties has promised to leave the government.

It's doubtful the story of Traykov's sacking from the first GERB cabinet got much press abroad, so I'm posting it here. Borisov, the Foreign minister and Traykov lead a delegation of businessmen, journalists and hangers-on to Qatar. While the PM and FM were with the Emir, Traykov lead the rest of the Bulgarian group. They went to the beach - had a great time. They went shopping-had a great time. Then they went to the shindig which was the entire purpose of the trip - the business forum, where they were to meet with Qatari investors and potential business partners. I suppose they also had a good time there, as they had all the catering to themselves - no Qataris at all turned up.

Plamen Oresharski - independent, supported by DPS
Prime Minister (2013-2014), Minister of Finance (2005-2009), Deputy minister of Finance (1997-2001)

The big enigma of this election. It was a bolt from the blue when Oresharski filed as an independent on the penultimate day before registrations closed. It's probably not a normal candidacy when the campaign events are not announced in advance for fear of protesters. The prevailing viewpoint is that his candidacy is a way for DPS to flex their muscles before the run-offs, demonstrating how many votes they have for sale can transfer to the endorsed candidate. For me Oresharski is eminently unsuitable for this task, as he has zero appeal to the traditional DPS voters and following his time in government, it's not like he can get significant support from non-traditional DPS voters. It may be that the DPS are in effect saying 'look at what we can do with the worst possible candidate, imagine what we can do with a good one'. The benchmark in this case would be the 2001 campaign of Reneta Indzhova - also a former PM, who ran as an independent endorsed by the DPS - she got some 160k votes. My hunch, however, is that Oresharski is running as the candidate of the Peevski faction that currently is under threat of being cast off by the main party. If I am correct, look to see a significant divergence between the Turkish and the Roma DPS strongholds, with only the latter strongly behind Oresharski.

Tatyana Doncheva - ,movement 21[sic]-NDSV coalition
BSP MP 1997-2009, Candidate for Sofia mayor 2005

Doncheva, a former prosecutor, has "the biggest balls in Bulgarian politics", or so you hear. Throughout the last 15 years, despite being the lawyer for some of the worst of the 1990's mafia, she has become an anti-corruption leader, exposing some of the unsavory deals that get made behind the scenes. She has not hesitated to name and shame some of the BSP leaders, with Parvanov at the forefront, even back when she was a BSP member. The support for her is overwhelmingly urban and mostly female, and after leaving the BSP, she has gotten fairly close to the RB - even endorsing their list for the EU Parliament election in 2014. In trying to appeal to these voters, however, she often has 'How do you do, fellow kids" moments. Case in point, the typography in the name of her party. Even more case in point, her official, I kid you not, campaign  video

In case you are unable or unwilling to watch, it's Doncheva (first from the left), a sheep, a wolf and a bale of hay in a boat in the middle of Iskar Reservoir. "It's possible". Is very sad. Is also not good boat.

[Beagle]

Installment 4 (of 5)

OK, if you've read this far, you deserve a treat - the freak show. We've got plenty of those on offer, even though 2 got thrown out for not submitting enough signatures: the former Attack MP who got convicted of molesting a 13 year old Roma boy in a Sofia underpass while he was still a deputy and the de rigueur Eastern-European-aging-rock-star-what-will-shake-up-the-rotten-system-(Pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain).

This left the count of candidates at 21. I have already written up about 7 of them. I won't try to describe another 7 'earnest' candidates, who may have their quirks, but are in the race for real (or so I perceive them), so it's more sad than funny when they fail to reach 1%.

We've always had nuts trying to run for president, but the size of the field is the largest in 25 years. This, at least in part, is a product of the 2013 Electoral code. The BSP created and passed it with the thinking that since the GERB supporters are voting for a buffoon, it would be better for them to have more buffoons to choose from. The code lowered the signature threshold, the deposit requirement and the requirements to run as an independent. Even more importantly, according to the new electoral code, each qualified candidate is entitled to 40000 levs worth of state-paid media appearances, to be distributed to media of the candidate's choice. The candidates' campaigns are not as bad, but for the referendum campaign, where everyone can register a "for" or an "against" committee, dozens of astoturf campaigns have sprung up, advertising in completely unknown provincial tv and radio stations, obviously splitting the money.

The first three of these candidates have breakout potential - they may possibly overtake three candidates from installment 3, and maybe even Kalfin is not entirely safe. They will certainly not be troubling the top 3, though.

Vesselin Mareshki - a raging populist, Mareshki runs a chain of pharmacies and has recently expanded into gas/petrol stations. His big selling point is that he does not pay excise and other taxes, allowing him to sell fuel significantly cheaper than the established cartel, which meant that they had to take measures. For over an year now, the fuel in Varna where he's based has been 15-20% cheaper than in the rest of the country. Earlier he was doing something similar with the pricing in his pharmacies, which approach got him into the run-off for mayor of Varna twice... eh, his political activities are/were supported by a particularly odious branch of the oligarchy, so it's not only his slogan 'Deeds not words' at work

Georges Ganchev - a reprise from the early days of democracy. It's very unlikely, but he may have residual following - at least 600k of the voters have cast a vote for him at one point or another between 1991 and 2001, when he got 800k and then 900k voters in successive presidential elections. Charismatic and confident, he was something completely different to the serious! politicians of the early 90s. Of course, in those days it was not yet clear that the stories he told of his successes were entirely made up. If you see Red Dawn (the 1984 movie), you may see the pinnacle of his acting career that he boasted about - he plays a mook who takes an arrow to the ... er, behind. As in his previous campaigns, his politics are hard to define, but they've never been relevant for his political success anyway.

Dimitar Marinov (Mityu the Pistol) - a small time conman and reality show star, who has claimed the mantle of the class clown for this election. It's debatable if he's self-aware or not - he's said that he's voting for GERB, but he's running in order to give out the ubiquitous election time grilled meat to his downtrodden constituencies - the poor, the villagers, the pensioners, the disabled and the Roma. Overweight, unkempt and speaking with a hard to understand dialect, he's a caricature who may attract some voters who want to have a laugh and/or to protest against compulsory voting.

From here on, it's the "lulz" team.

Bisser Milanov (the Stain) - with 13 convictions and another 5 or 6 trials in his future, he's a 'counter protester' - the ring leader of gang that tried to spark trouble during the 2013 protests against the Oresharski government. When that didn't work, he and his people just started to organize protests 'in support' of the government.

Yordanka Koleva (Yoanna Rubin) - a faith-healer, clairvoyant and/or a fortune teller, she's destined to become our president - it's in the stars. Very popular, apparently - Blair and Sarkozy were both huge fans - Blair even invited her to move in with them, so that she'd always be available. When sat down for an interview, she forbid the journalist to ask any questions, instead reading out from her manifesto. Obviously everybody else should just give up now...

Kamen Popov - a member of one of the actual Fascists fringe groups, he shot to fame when he slapped Volen Siderov (the Attack leader) on live TV when Siderov had burst into the theatre academy with his entourage and was accosting the students, accusing them of filming his drunken outbursts. While in all likelihood more than 80% are 'for' slapping Siderov, I doubt as many would approve of the only other time Popov has been in the news - when he rode with the 'Night wolves' Russian pro-Putin biker gang.

Kemal Ramadan - a Muslim Bulgarian nationalist... His choice in political heroes and role models can potentially bear some criticism - he has claimed that Ramzan Kadyrev is both a personal friend and a political guide and model.

[Famous Mortimer]

So the Reformist Bloc never had their planned leadership election?

[Beagle]

So the Reformist Bloc never had their planned leadership election?

Haha, of course not. In fact, on Nov 13th, after the second round, the Reformist Block officially ceases to exist. The agreement between the 5 parties forming the RB was for "one full electoral cycle" and the presidential is the last of these elections. Some sort of future cooperation is definitely on the table, especially if Kuneva fulfills her promise to withdraw from government in case Traykov does not get 200k votes. But with her still clinging on to the hope of presiding over the Council of the EU in the latter half of 2017, she'll probably prefer to stick it out until Borisov pulls the plug.

[Beagle]

Installment 5 (of 5)

The actual campaign has been fairly unremarkable so far. The non-GERB candidates were in suspended animation until the ruling party announced their candidate. GERB emphasize that a vote for Tsacheva is a vote for the party, not for her personally. The other parties make more of an emphasis of the personality of the candidate.

The two frontrunners Tsacheva and Radev refuse to acknowledge the other candidates by debating them. The only debate between the two of them so far was a dull affair, with the candidates in full agreement on domestic issues. CETA and Crimea were the only points of contention for the entire hour. The most popular comments after the debate were "Tsacheva and Radev were debating? Against whom?" and "Tsacheva and Radev would make a perfect campaign ticket". ABV in particular have been adamant that Borisov and Ninova have already negotiated the outcome of the election and their respective campaigns are just for show.

Polling - I have not weighted the pollsters (who are all generally bad). I may have made some errors, but here's the aggregate result without attempting to distribute the 'undecided' vote, only the definite abstainers.

Tsacheva - 28.3%
Radev - 21.1%
Karakachanov - 10.1%
Kalfin - 6.5%
Traykov - 5.4%
Doncheva - 3.9%
Oresharski - 2.4%
Mareshki - 4.5%  -  only polled in 4 of the 7 polls I've used

None - 7.4% - for the first time 'None of the above' will be an actual option on the ballot and the pollsters and pundits are divided how many will use it.

Due to the short nature of the campaign, movement is impossible to discern - there should be some last minute polls next week, where perhaps more will become clear. It is certain that Oresharski will receive more votes - DPS voters are notoriously hard to poll - but other than that, the outlook is unclear.

As to the run-off, all pollsters have the result within the margin of error (generally within 2%), with 5 out of 6 giving the slight advantage to Tsacheva. 'None of the above' complicates things, but if you have gone to the trouble of getting to the voting station for the run-off, why would you pick "None of the above"?

So yes, we have a race on our hands. Thank you if you've made it this far. I don't know what got into me, it certainly wasn't my intention to write as much.

[Beagle]

Electoral Rules Referendum Pt. 2: Electric Boogaloo
installment 1/2

Sorry, but I feel a bit of context/history is needed here, feel free to skip to the next post if you want to see just the information about the referendum on Sunday, Nov 6th:

In the dying days of the 2005-2009 Parliament, as a last ditch effort to show themselves sensitive to the people's outcry, BSP, DPS and NDSV passed a new law on referendums, making it much easier to call a referendum. President Plevneliev took advantage of this law, which gave him the proposal initiative, when he sent 3 proposals for referendum questions to the 2013-2014 Parliament:
- 'Should a part of the MPs be elected in single member districts?' - i.e. (re)introduce some form of parallel voting - presumably along the German model
- 'Should it also be possible to vote remotely through electronic means?'
- 'Should voting in elections be made compulsory'

Under the constitution the actual approval of a referendum is the prerogative of Parliament. The 2013-2014 Parliament had a BSP-DPS (supported by Attack) majority, which was hostile to Plevneliev, and they rejected the proposal out of hand. Under the 2009 law as it stood then, however, if a referendum proposal was supported by 700 000 signatures collected within 3 months, parliament would have to automatically approve the referendum. So a 'citizen's committee', headed by former BSP parliamentarian Georgi Bliznashki, started collecting the signatures, but in the meantime the government fell and Bliznashki was appointed caretaker prime minister.

The collected signatures were submitted to the newly elected (current) Parliament, and although they fell under the threshold which would have made scheduling the referendum compulsory, it was assumed that as the initiative had been supported by all parties who formed the majority, it would pass easily. However, the 'single member districts' was soundly rejected (89 for-85 against - 22 abstaining, with only GERB and ABV voting for), the 'compulsory voting' was rejected through a parliamentary procedure falling just 5 votes short and only the 'e-voting' referendum was scheduled to run simultaneously with the municipal elections last year. This shocking rebuff of 'their' president was probably the first sign of the power play within GERB that has been a feature of the past year or so. As expected, the 'e-voting' referendum passed overwhelmingly, but fell far short of the participation threshold which would have made it binding.

Slavi Trifonov, who is atalk show host, singer, comic, producer and poster case on the importance of timing in politics, then pronounced himself the voice and instrument of the people and began his own signature gathering campaign  His job was made easier by a GERB-proposed amendment to the referendum law, which made the requirements for a mandatory referendum even lower.

In an alt-reality, had Trifonov organized a political party and ran in 2005, which he was considering, it's possible that today we would have been in the 11th year of his rule, that Boyko Borisov would have been either Trifonov's lieutenant or his chief opposition, and Bulgaria would be as vigorous a democracy as, say, Armenia. Trifonov's populism, sham patriotism and general against-all attitude had made him into the most popular showman in Bulgaria and his popularity rating was in the 60's and 70's back then. In the succeeding years he's been steadily losing popularity - both because he had outlived his usefulness to the party-controlled journalists, who now sensed a threat and began attacking him, and because his shtick has gotten stale

The six questions Trifonov wanted to pose to Bulgaria were:
1) Should all MPs be elected in single member districts using a two-round system?
2) Should the number of MPs be reduced to 120? [from the current 240]
3) Should voting in elections and referendums be made compulsory?
4) Should it also be possible to vote remotely through electronic means?
5) Should the state subsidy for the political parties be reduced to 1 lev per year per vote in the last parliamentary election?
6) Should the regional and local police directors be popularly elected using a two-round system?

His signature gathering campaign was successful (even though about 1/4 of the signatures were invalid) and made the holding of a referendum mandatory. However, and it is both the letter and the spirit of the law, this does not mean that anything can be put to the people and if it passes, it becomes law. In a shameful punt, though, Parliament refused to do their job and weed out the illegal questions - they were afraid of the inevitable hate campaign they would face for 'ignoring the will of the people'.

Plevneliev submitted three of the questions to the Constitutional Court for review - No. 2, 4 and 6. Predictably, all 3 were struck down unanimously (also voting were Parvanov/BSP/DPS appointees):

Question 2 for being blatantly unconstitutional, as the number of deputies is explicitly set in art. 63 and changing that number is the exclusive prerogative of the Grand National Assembly

Question 4 for being, well, repetitive. Although given the way Parliament intends to implement e-voting (using 3 elections as a trial, without having it count), you could make an argument that the question needed to be asked again.

Question 6 for being completely outside the scope of referendums. The introduction of elected sheriffs would necessitate a complete reworking of our police system and also would be ripe for abuse.

Cue outrage from Trifonov and his supporters. To summarize in Atlas forum parlance, the battle-cry was "Muh popular sovereignty!1!" Trifonov held a free concert cum political rally last weekend, which many people expected would have been the founding of his political party, but it wasn't. The system, which was supposed to be smashed, lived to see another day.

Vesselin Mareshki (see installment 4/5 above) collected signatures for a referendum in his pharmacies and gas stations in the same time frame too. His initiative fell short by only 6000 signatures, but it was enough for Parliament to reject it - Mareshki does not have as ready a tribune as Trifonov. The questions, for the record, were:

1)Should the fuel market be regulated so that prices for gas are lower?
2)Should the restriction on one person owning more than 4 pharmacies be lifted so that there is more competition and prices for medicines are lower?
3)Should the state subsidy for political parties be eliminated completely?
4)Should the number of MPs be reduced to 120?
5)Should the MP immunity from prosecution be abolished?

[Beagle]

Electoral Rules Referendum Pt. 2: Electric Boogaloo
installment 2/2

So here's what we're voting on this Sunday. Polling has been scarce, but it assumed that all three questions will pass easily - the key is in the turnout, as in order for the results to be binding, not only does the proposal have to get 50%+1 approval, but turnout must equal or surpass the turnout for the last parliamentary election. Normally, there would be no chance of that, but see the discussion about question 2 below.

Question 1: Should all MPs be elected in single member districts using a two-round system?

Probably the question that is most interesting to the Atlas crowd. Bulgaria elected 200 members of the 1990 Grand National Assembly using a two-round system, but the 2009 shambolic "majoritarian" election of 31 province-wide MPs was FPTP.

I am aware of two simulations of the 2014 results using single member districts. The first is an extremely crude algorithm, which disregards geography almost completely, just going by the sequential number of the polling site to place it in a district. But it does have the advantage of having the districts roughly equal in voter numbers. Using it yields the following result:
GERB - 2 elected outright, 191 run-offs in which they would lead coming into the second round, 30 run-offs in which they would trail
BSP - 5 run-offs in which they would lead, 124 in which they would trail
DPS - 17 elected outright, 25 run-offs in which they would lead, 14 in which they would trail

The second simulation actually uses the addresses of the polling stations to approximate the electoral districts. This means that it can generate a zoomable, colorful map!


Screenshot. The link is above. I tried having it lead to the google translated page, but it seems this deletes the overlays that actually make the map, so you'll have to exercise your Bulgarian or have google/bing translate it for you

This map produces the following results
GERB: 223 run-offs, in 197 of which they would lead in the first round
BSP: 137 run-offs, in 6 of which they would lead in the first round
DPS: 17 elected outright, 45 run-offs, in 20 of which they would lead in the first round
RB: 30 run-offs, in all of which they would trail in the first round
PF: 11 run-offs, in all of which they would trail in the first round

A very rough estimate of the resulting parliament would have GERB somewhere in the range between 130 and 190 MPs, BSP: 10-70, DPS: 25-40, RB: 5-13, PF: 2-8. Not completely unrepresentative, but giving a certain supermajority to a party that gоt 32.7% of the vote.

If you zoom in, you will see that the proposed districts are hideously unequal in voter numbers - my own district would have 45237 voters, while the one with the lowest number has less than 20000. This is in part because the author chose to respect the borders of the current multi-member districts and they are hideously unequal too. A vote in the Vidin region district under the present system is worth more than twice the vote in Sofia-24 district. This is so because in order to keep any semblance of proportional representation, Vidin needs to have at least 3 members and that's where the number is kept, even though the population is barely enough for 2. Also, it doesn't help that the author has used the polling sites as border marks - in an effort to keep down policing costs, a lot less schools are used these days as polling sites, making the combined precinct area very large - I know of one school in Sofia that houses 17 polling sites, for a total of more than 14000 on the electoral roll. This also accounts for the many districts that split towns and villages - it simply means that the polling station also takes in parts of the rural area in the vicinity. The non-contiguous districts can also be explained this way, although even in the present system some precincts are non-contiguous.

So in effect, the question is do we want to move(return) to a two party system with little to none coalition building/politics, but also with little to no checks on the ruling party,

Question 3) Should voting in elections and referendums be made compulsory?

See, the problem here is that voting in elections is kinda sorta compulsory already, following an amendment to the electoral code in the spring of 2016. If you're eligible, you're obliged to vote (and as per the last minute change of last week - vote in both rounds), otherwise... well, nothing will happen. But if you miss another election of the same type - in this case the 2021 Presidential election - you will be struck off the voter rolls for the 2026 Presidential elections! Unless, of course, you had a valid excuse for missing one or both of the elections (but good luck submitting the valid excuse - there are no guidelines or procedures) or simply applying in your municipality to have your voting rights restored.

A popular joke when this amendment passed: 'OK, I'll skip paying my taxes for two years and after that they should be striking me off the taxpayer rolls

Should this referendum pass, voting will be compulsory also for the future referendums (referenda?), presumably also leading to disenfranchisement of non-voters.

The effect of this new introduction remains to be seen. A lot of people have heard that voting is compulsory now, a significantly smaller number of people have heard of the punishment (or lack thereof) for not voting. This may drive the voter turnout up, so it is not completely outside the realm of possibilities for turnout to surpass the 51.05% of the 2014 parliamentary election.

Question 5) Should the state subsidy for the political parties be reduced to 1 lev per year per vote in the last parliamentary election?

At the moment, the state subsidy is 1 lev per month per vote. A bit much for cash-strapped Bulgaria, but if they followed the law to the letter, the parties would have little financing otherwise - corporate political donations are prohibited since 2014, all private donations must be recorded, including the source of the money. There is also a hard campaign spending ceiling, which is so low that GERB are technically not allowed to spend more than 3/7 of their subsidy on campaigning. So they spent a lot of the remainder on philanthropy and charity. Virtually all parties rely on other, more illicit, funding sources. The state subsidy goes mostly to pay the salary of staffers and party central office workers.

Paradoxically, one of the few polls that asked questions on the referendum found that support for the "No" position when stated out in detail on 2 of the 3 questions is significantly higher than the "Yes" position when stated out in detail - but that people were still voting "Yes" by a clear majority for all 3 questions.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Great job, nice posts!

[nyordanov]

Hi all,

I'm the one who made the map mentioned above (I saw a referral from this forum), so let me provide a justification for some of the decisions I've made:

1. Election results data is only available at the polling station level. In effect, I know where the polling stations are, but I do not know where the voters live, which is why the single member districts are based on the polling stations' coordinates.

2. Obviously, I can't split up polling stations (if I do that - how do I decide where each vote should go?). As such, districts are formed with just two operations:

- merge two adjacent districts
- move one polling station from district A to B, provided that the PS is adjacent to district B

3. This leads to the problem with the unequal district sizes. For example, there are polling stations in Sofia, Varna, etc. which have about 20000 voters each, and each and every one of their neighbours has also about 20000 voters. The ideal district size is about 30000, so as you can see - any district which has one of the weirdly large polling stations will be either much larger or much smaller that the desired size.

4. Separate polling stations on the same address (large schools) are treated as different, but neighbouring locations. This causes the narrow strips of single-polling-station districts near the centre of Sofia. This is largely an artefact of the visual representation and doesn't affect the numerical result.

5. Current multi-member district borders are respected mostly as a performance-oriented heuristic. Checking if two "new" districts are adjacent is slow - the total operations are (# of polling stations in district A) * (# of polling stations in district B). Checking if two "new" districts are in the same "old" district is a constant-time operation which, in practice, reduces the total time it takes to form the new district by more than four times.

Also, the standard deviation for the new district sizes is about 4800. The standard deviation without this heuristic is less than that, but again - more than 4000, mostly because of the large polling stations I mentioned above.

6. Further, removing this heuristic resulted in weird narrow, but long districts, some of which spanned the entire length of the country. With this heuristic in place, this problem is limited to a much smaller area. For example, locate the district which includes Sungurlare, Karnobat, Sredets and so on.

7. The non-contiguous districts are caused by the unfortunate fact that the country is not perfectly rectangular Checking whether two districts are adjacent is already slow; checking whether their shared border is inside the country is slower. On the other hand, using a rectangle as a simplification of the shape of the country allows me to simply map the intersection of the country and the rectangle.

This is mostly a problem near the border, where the country is concave - see the north-western town of Vidin and the village of Novo Selo to its west (where either the entire Novo Selo should have been in Vidin's district or none of it), as well as the village of Rezovo near the border with Turkey which should have been in the district encompassing Primorsko, Tsarevo and Ahtopol, and not its current district of Malko Turnovo, Sredets and Karnobat.

-----

Finally, this is the algorithm:
- Split up the country in a number of districts, so that every district includes exactly one polling station.
- Quickly merge adjacent districts until there aren't any districts with less than 10000 voters.
- Reduce the number of districts to 240 by merging adjacent districts, but taking care to either decrease the standard deviation, or to only increase it by the smallest amount possible.
- Move polling stations from one district to another, provided that the standard deviation decreases with each move (repeat until stdev can't decrease any more).

[Beagle]

Hi all,

I'm the one who made the map mentioned above (I saw a referral from this forum), so let me provide a justification for some of the decisions I've made:

1. Election results data is only available at the polling station level. In effect, I know where the polling stations are, but I do not know where the voters live, which is why the single member districts are based on the polling stations' coordinates.

...

Thank you so much for the work you've done in producing the map and the detailed explanation. I really hope that more people will get to see it and to read your reasons against the proposed change. I may have some quibbles here and there, but on the whole it's really informative.

The campaign closes in about 8 hours. In the past 3 days the pollsters have produced their final predictions, which for the most part are remarkably similar. Virtually all see Tsacheva holding steady, Radev and Karakachanov inching upwards, Mareshki and Oresharski surging (relatively) and Kalfin and Doncheva leaking support to the 'official left' candidate.

I have aggregated the poll results collected at the Bulgarian wiki, taking the liberty to exclude 3 'fake' agencies, to redistribute the 'undecided' voters where reported, assuming that those who make up their minds in the last days will mostly go for the frontrunners, and to round up a bit. Here's the result:

Tsetska Tsacheva (GERB) - 31 %
Rumen Radev (independent, supported by the BSP) - 26 %
Krassimir Karakachanov ('United Patriots' - PF + Ataka) - 11.5 %
Vesselin Mareshki (independent) - 6 %
Plamen Oresharski (indpendent, supported by the DPS) - 5.5 %
None of the above - 5 %
Traycho Traykov (RB) - 5 %
Ivaylo Kalfin (ABV) - 4.5 %
Tatyana Doncheva (,movement 21 + NDSV) - 1.5 %

14 other candidates - a combined total of 4%, which might be on the low side, but at least 9 will struggle to pick up even 0.2% of the vote.

Pollsters seem to be divided only by the projected turnout. 3 of the 5 agencies claim that around 300-500k 'unlikely' voters will come out due to the 'compulsory' voting, resulting in very high participation rate and making it almost certain that the referendum questions will be approved. The other 2 think that this will be a 'normal' open election, with around 50-55%* of eligible voters taking part and likely dooming the referendum to 'referral to parliament'.
*In the unlikely event anyone pays attention, I have mislead you on the participation threshold the referendum need to pass - the 220k invalid votes from the 2014 parliamentary election will count too, so turnout for the referendum needs to exceed 3.5 million. And while I'm on the correction note, my hunch about Oresharski was wrong. I hadn't seen any footage from his rallies, but by now it's clear that the mainline DPS are in full support.

As to the run-off, Radev has pulled into the lead in all surveys published so far (by a slim margin of 1 to 4 %), but there will be a new round of polling next week. The campaign talk and behaviour seem to suggest that Tsacheva is likely to break the decade-long GERB winning streak. Is 'coakleying' a transitive verb?

[Beagle]

With less than 24h to go, I'm still undecided on the referendum. My first round vote for president is obviously Traykov. Even if he wasn't the only unabashedly pro EU/US candidate in the race, and even if he didn't support the judicial reform that I find vitally important, he'd still have my vote as a fellow bookish dweeb. Plus he's warning against state capture and he refers to the Donald as a 'post-truth politician', so he's reading the same books I am.

But I'm genuinely not sure what I will do with the referendum ballot paper. There are four possible choices, given that all 3 questions will receive more than 50% in approval, but may not reach the 3.5 mil participation threshold. In order from support to opposition, they are:
- voting 'Yes'
- defacing the ballot
- voting 'No'
- not voting at all. As all 3 questions are on a single ballot, this means either not taking the ballot paper at all, or leaving it blank. As weird as it may sound, participation for all questions will be calculated separately and if you deface the ballot next to a question, you will count as a participant for that question, but if you leave the "yes" and "no" boxes blank, you will not.

Single member districts are anathema to me. Remember what I said about fraud not having much effect on the national level? With single member districts of 24 to 35 thousand, we'll have a parliament of vote buyers and fraudsters. I'm definitely skipping that one.

Compulsory voting - I don't have a fundamental problem with this per se, but I also don't see what problem will it solve. Still, I'm leaning towards voting "no" on this question. I'm afraid that if conspiracy theorists, tin-foil hatters and nihilists, who otherwise would not have voted, turn out, our democracy will only be hurt.

Reducing the party subsidy - this will probably pass 90% approval. There certainly are a lot of examples why the party subsidy should be reduced/eliminated - from the guy who made a cottage industry of running parties with similar names to the frontrunners in the early aughts (ie. 'National Union 'For Simeon II' in 2001 - that alone made him a millionaire, and coincidentally deprived the NDSV from an absolute majority) to the have-beens who run in coalitions like 'Bulgaria without censorship' just to get their fingers in the pie. But it's clear that this will hurt the non-clientelist parties most (to the extent such exist). And I hate to see Trifonov as defender of the public purse and mores. Might be skipping this one too.

[GMantis]

In case you are unable or unwilling to watch, it's Doncheva (first from the left), a sheep, a wolf and a bale of hay in a boat in the middle of Iskar Reservoir. "It's possible". Is very sad. Is also not good boat.

I think this is a play on the old story of how someone can transport a sheep, a wolf and a bale of hay with a boat that can take only two of each without the wolf eating the sheep or the sheep the hay.

[GMantis]

The first results are rather surprising considering all the polls until now (though the illegal exit polls got it right).

Rumen Radev: 24-26.7%
Tsetska Tsacheva: 22.5-23.5%
Krasimir Karakachanov: 13.6-15%
Veselin Mareshki: 8.3-10.2%
Traycho Traykov: 6.8-7.1%
Plamen Oresharski: 5.8-6.9%
Ivaylo Kalfin 3.4-4%
Against all: 5.5-6.2%

This should give Radev a very high chance of winning the second round, unless Karakachanov explicitly supports Tsacheva (and perhaps not even in this case).

The three referendums seem to have passed, but without sufficient turnout to come into force without parliamentary approval (which likely won't happen).

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Will Borisov call for early elections seriously if Tsacheva will lose or it was just a bullsh**t for the campaign needs?

[GMantis]

Will Borisov call for early elections seriously if Tsacheva will lose or it was just a bullsh**t for the campaign needs?

The wording of his pledge was vague enough to allow him to take it back if she finished second (he pledged he would resign if she lost the first round, which could mean not winning or not qualifying for the run-off). On the other hand, some have speculated that he chose such an awful candidate because he wanted to lose and have the opportunity to call for early elections at an advantageous moment.