Bulgarian voters, worn down by corruption, back new coalition

Former President Rumen Radev of Bulgaria at a polling station in Sofia on Sunday
Photo: Agence France-Presse

Bulgarians voted decisively on Sunday for politicians promising change and a crackdown on corruption, delivering a blow to the center-right party that had dominated for the last decade, ‘The New York Times’ reports.

Former President Rumen Radev, leader of a new coalition, Progressive Bulgaria, claimed an “uncontested victory” in comments to journalists outside his party headquarters two hours after voting had ended.

Polling agencies reported that the coalition was leading and might be heading for a majority of seats in Parliament. The results remain incomplete and the official count is expected Monday, but the size of Progressive Bulgaria’s win appeared to be the largest seen in Bulgaria in years.

“It’s a victory of hope over desperation, freedom over fear,” Mr. Radev said. “A victory, I’d say, of morale, because people rejected the arrogance of old parties and didn’t bend to their lies and manipulations.”

The party of the former prime minister, Boyko Borissov, Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria, or GERB, which resigned in the face of the protests in December, was pushed into second place with a much reduced portion of the vote.

And an alliance of liberal opposition parties called We Continue the Change — Democratic Bulgaria, which spearheaded mass protests in December that had brought down the government, made significant gains, coming in a close third with 13 to 14 percent.

Both Progressive Bulgaria and We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria have campaigned on plans to fight the stranglehold of corruption that Mr. Borissov, together with another powerful politician, Delyan Peevski, leader of a small party, DPS, have maintained over Bulgaria’s institutions.

“In the new Parliament, there will be a strong anti-corruption majority,” Daniel Smilov, a professor of political science and the program director of the Center for Liberal Strategies at the University of Sofia, wrote in emailed comments after the polls closed.

“This will mark the end of the dominance of GERB and DPS in Bulgarian politics,” he wrote. “They will be prevented from blocking necessary reforms in the judiciary and the security services.”

Turnout was up from previous years, at around 50 percent, breaking the trend of apathy among an electorate weary of repeated elections in which turnout fell as low as 34 percent in 2024. Five parties appeared to have passed the 4 percent threshold to win seats in Parliament, polling agencies indicated.

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“Considerably higher voter turnout gives serious legitimacy to the new Parliament,” Mr. Smilov wrote. “Formation of government will be easier due to decreased fragmentation.”

Polling stations were busy on a sunny spring day in the capital, Sofia, with lines stretching down the street in some places. Voters said they wanted to change the status quo, a reference to the coalition led by GERB that has dominated the political scene for the last decade and become mired in corruption.

Many voters said that they did not expect one party to win outright and that there could be drawn-out negotiations to form a coalition government.

“I don’t believe there could be sudden change out of the blue,” said Stiliyan Manolov, executive director of public transport in the municipality of Sofia. “There is no magic wand.”

Bulgarians have seen multiple governments come and go since the fall of Communism in 1989, most voted out for failing to deliver. It became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union, yet has remained at the bottom of the European family in terms of economic prosperity and endemic corruption.

Public dissatisfaction reached a peak in the past five years over a growing sense that a corrupt elite was ruling with impunity and that weak coalition governments were failing to enact promised reforms.

A former fighter pilot and commander of Bulgaria’s air force, Mr. Radev, 62, was twice elected president and became a popular figure in the country. The post of president in Bulgaria is largely ceremonial, which allowed him to remain aloof from the political maneuvering, and infighting, of daily governing. He resigned from it in January to join the race for Parliament.

Under Bulgaria’s parliamentary democracy, the party with a majority of seats in Parliament forms a government, with the party leader often but not always assuming the post of prime minister.

“Progressive Bulgaria will not go down the path of the previous stitched-together coalitions,” he told an applauding crowd.

Mr. Radev’s success in inspiring such a rapid surge of support reflects the disenchantment of many Bulgarians who are fed up with previous leaders. He offered a broad platform that can appeal to a wide cross section of society and draw in older generations, conservative, pro-Russian voters and the younger pro-European and business communities.

Bulgaria has deep cultural, religious and linguistic ties to Russia, said Parvan Simeonov, the founder of the Myara polling agency, and since the full-scale war in Ukraine began in 2022, politics in Bulgaria has changed from right wing versus left to East versus West.

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