Underdog Rightist Likely to Bring Surprise in Sofia Mayor Elections - Poll

While incumbent Sofia Mayor Yordanka Fandakova appears to be almost certain to retain her post at the upcoming election, an underdog rightist candidate might stage a surprise by making it to the run-off, according to a poll.

According to the results of the poll of the Alpha Research agency, incumbent Fandakova, a candidate of the ruling center-right party GERB, will get the support of 30.8% of the voters.

The bidder of the Bulgarian Socialist Party Georgi Kadiev, also known as the red yuppie, who lost to Fandakova at the by-elections in 2009, however, is seeing declining support. He is predicted to get only 12.4%.
At the same time, Proshko Proshkov, candidate of the rightist Democrats for Strong Bulgaria party, formerly of the Blue Coalition, might actually squeeze Kadiev out of the second place; according to the Alpha Research poll, Proshkov already has the support of 12.9%.

This means that Proshkov is well on the way of making it to a run-off, even though his lead is still very negligible, and Kadiev can make a comeback during the weeks before October 23, 2011, the day of Bulgaria's presidential and local elections.

None of the other candidates for Sofia Mayor stand even remote chances to make it to the second round, the poll shows.

Nikolay Pehlivanov, candidate of the nationalist party Ataka comes in fourth with 2.3%; he is followed by former Sofia Mayor Stefan Sofiyanski (in office 1995-2005), who gathers only 1.3% of the votes. Another nationalist Angel Dzhambazki from the VMRO party is sixth with 1%.

The major questions about the Sofia Mayor vote boil down to whether Fandakova and Kadiev will manage to mobilize the base of their respective parties; Proshkov's support is already said to be well beyond the base of the rightist Blue Coalition.

Alpha Research has found that 44% of the Sofia residents are satisfied with the work of incumbent Yordanka Fandakova. At the same time, 76% are convinced that there are large-scale corruption schemes going on within the Sofia Municipality.

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