European parliamentary elections in Bulgaria

[GMantis]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election%2C_2007_(Bulgaria)
The first elections for the European parliament are being held today. Interest in the election has been very low and turnout will probably not exceed 40%. The major reasons for this is ignorance about the role or importance of the European parliament, a perception that the Bulgarian delegation will have little influence, that this again just about money. The new electoral system, which has elements of preferential voting, is also confusing (I still don't know what exactly it is supposed to do and I wouldn't call myself ignorant in politics).
In Bulgaria it is forbidden to publish projections of results before the vote is over, but as usual various media have published coded estimates of the results. Based on them, I predict the following distribution of MEPs (Bolded are the one I consider the most likely):
BSP: 23%-24%, 5 MEP
GERB (Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria): 20%-22%, 4-5MEP
MRF: 17%-19%, 4 MEP
Attack: 11%-17%, 2, 3 or 4 MEP
National Movement Simeon II: 6,5%-7%, 1-2 MEP
Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria: 4,5%-5,5%, (this is surprising, polls didn't give them above 3%) 0-1 MEP
Union of the Democratic Forces:4,5%, 1 but unlikely.
The other parties have insignificant chances of electing a MEP.
The other surprising result is the MRF's. It seems that the removal of voting rights of people who have not lived recently in Bulgaria (i.e. Bulgarian Turks in Turkey) has not hindered them.
Update: The latest coded results are available here. The films, which stand for the leading parties, are in the same order as in this post.

[minionofmidas]

The first elections for the European parliament are being held today. Interest in the election has been very low and turnout will probably not exceed 40%. The major reasons for this is ignorance about the role or importance of the European parliament, a perception that the Bulgarian delegation will have little influence, that this again just about money.

You seem to have adapted to EU reality pretty fast. -_-

[GMantis]

Exit poll results are in. They are conflicting reports, but it seems that the results are:
BSP: 5 MEP
GERB  5MEP
MRF: 4 MEP
Attack: 2-3  MEP
National Movement Simeon II:  1 MEP
Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria: 0-1

The first elections for the European parliament are being held today. Interest in the election has been very low and turnout will probably not exceed 40%. The major reasons for this is ignorance about the role or importance of the European parliament, a perception that the Bulgarian delegation will have little influence and that this is again just about money.

You seem to have adapted to EU reality pretty fast. -_-

Sorry, but in this respect we surpassed the EU long ago .

[GMantis]

There seems to be a sudden reversal in the preliminary results
MRF: 5 MEP
BSP: 5 MEP
GERB: 4 MEP
Attack: 3 MEP
National Movement Simeon II:  1 MEP
This is MRF's best result since they were founded in 1990.

[2952-0-0]

So what happened to those Bulgarian nurses in Libya who decided to "run" for MEP to escape death?

[GMantis]

So what happened to those Bulgarian nurses in Libya who decided to "run" for MEP to escape death?

They didn't decide to, the party "Order, Law and Justice" attempted to enter them as candidates and they agreed to enter. Their candidacy was rejected, as they obviously didn't meet the residency requirements.
I think this was more of a case of an unscrupulous party trying to use their tragedy for political gain and the nurses, desperate for any solution and unaware of the political situation in Bulgaria, agreed to apply.

[kireev]

MAP!! Sorry, this webpage shrinks it
http://www.electoralgeography.com/photo/maps/2007-bulgaria-european.gif

[Hash]

GERB 21.69% - 5MEP
BSP 21.41% - 5MEP
MRF 20.26%  - 5MEP
Attack 14.22% - 2MEP
Nat Mov Simeon II 6.26% - 1MEP
UDF 4.73%
Dems for Strong Bulgaria 4.34%
Coalition of bulgarian social democrats 1.94%
Agrarian National Union 1.54%
Bulgarian Communist Party 0.98%  -- lol
U. Free Dems. 0.74%
Green 0.51%
Civil Union for New Bulgaria 0.48%
Order, Legality, Justice 0.47%
Ind 1 0.28%
Ind 2 0.14%

turnout: 28.6%

Quite good result for the GERB.

[GMantis]

GERB 21.69% - 5MEP
BSP 21.41% - 5MEP
MRF 20.26%  - 5MEP
Attack 14.22% - 2MEP
Nat Mov Simeon II 6.26% - 1MEP
UDF 4.73%
Dems for Strong Bulgaria 4.34%
Coalition of bulgarian social democrats 1.94%
Agrarian National Union 1.54%
Bulgarian Communist Party 0.98%  -- lol
U. Free Dems. 0.74%
Green 0.51%
Civil Union for New Bulgaria 0.48%
Order, Legality, Justice 0.47%
Ind 1 0.28%
Ind 2 0.14%

turnout: 28.6%

Quite good result for the GERB.

Actually, it is more likely that Attack will receive 3 MEP and DPS (MRF) 4. The big news is not the results of GERB but of DPS - even third, they have never received such a large result. They achieved it mainly due to very high (relatively) turnout in the regions with the highest ethnic Turkish population: in five of them (Kardzhali, Razgrad, Targovishte, Silistra and Shumen the turnout was over 40% and they received a far higher percentage than the Turkish population there.
(See http://www.nsi.bg/Census_e/Census_e.htm).
Ataka has also improved their results and not surprisingly, most in the above mentioned regions.

[GMantis]

The final distribution of MEPs:
BSP (PES) 5
GERB 5
DPS 4
Ataka 3
NDSV 1.
The requierement of 15% (for a single candidate) for preferential voting was not reached by any candidate, so still not sure what exactly it was supposed to do.

[Hash]

DPS means "Movement of Rights and Freedoms" or what I referred to as MRF right?

[GMantis]

DPS means "Movement of Rights and Freedoms" or what I referred to as MRF right?

Yes, it's the transliteration of the Bulgarian name, like GERB and NDSV, which would be CEDB and NMSS in English (though "gerb" also means "coat of arms").