Bulgaria: Incumbent Rumen Radew wins Bulgarian presidential election

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Bulgaria's head of state Rumen Radew (here casting his vote in the first ballot on November 14, 2021)

Photo: Valentina Petrova / dpa

Bulgaria's head of state Rumen Radew clearly won the runoff election for the presidency, according to a forecast made on Sunday evening.

He can count on 65.7 percent of the vote, while his challenger Anastas Gerdschikow was able to convince 31.5 percent of the voters on Sunday.

That emerges from the first forecast of the polling institute Gallup International on the basis of voter surveys.

The opinion research institute Alpha Research published a similar forecast for the outcome of the second round of elections.

The turnout was therefore less than 40 percent and thus even lower than in the first election round a week ago.

However, this has no effect on the validity of the runoff election.

The runoff election between the two best-placed candidates in the first ballot had become necessary because Radew narrowly missed his re-election in the first ballot with 49.5 percent of the votes.

The voter turnout was also insufficient in the first round with a good 40 percent.

The general of the reserve Radev and the university professor Gerdzhikov, rector of the University of Sofia, ran as independent candidates.

Radew was supported by the socialists who emerged from the former communists and the protest parties, Gerdschikow by the bourgeois GERB of the former head of government Boiko Borissow and the party of the Turkish minority DPS.

him / dpa