First survey of attitudes by Market Links and bTV.
Yes, the difference between Yotova and Gyurov is large, but there are also some other trends that should be noted:
- PB won the last parliamentary elections by nearly 45%. We see a decline in support for the left-wing party;
- Gyurov takes much more from the democratic parties, i.e. manages to attract a wider periphery;
- none of the other candidacies that are made by representatives of the democratic forces have any chance of at least an honorable result, they only have the opportunity to divide the democratic vote;
- Kostadinov's result is higher than that of Vazrazhdane in the last elections, apparently returning few voters dissatisfied with the hesitant actions of the PB;
- those undecided about whom to vote for completely cover the difference between the first and second.
And a few consequences:
- for the first time in a long time, the campaign matters;
- Yotova must try to stop the outflow of fans to Kostadinov, because those ten percent or so who might return to him will play a bad joke on her. She has no chance among pro-European voters, and if she loses the anti-European ones, she will get a surprisingly low result;
- I don't know who is running Yotova's campaign, but it would be good if they stopped making blunders like ordering young people to attend her events, each such blunder could cost her 0.5% of her result;
- Every failure or problem of the government will be written off to Yotova, every new billion loan taken, every new tax, every new strange appointment, every fled investor - all of this will reduce her result;
- Gyurov should continue the calm campaign, which reminds of his managerial capacity, as well as the opportunity to be a real corrective to the total power of the ruling party;
- all those who supposedly pretend to be pro-democratic candidates should withdraw from the campaign, calling for a vote for Gyurov, otherwise they are wasting vote and no one will choose them for nothing;
- democratic voters have a huge chance to reverse the trend, hopefully internal squabbles will be avoided, and everyone will work together to attract new fans through a positive campaign.
Finally:
A small mathematical model that my colleagues and I did years ago shows that if the difference in the first round between Yotova and Gyurov is below 11.5%, then Gyurov has a great chance of winning the elections. So the campaign should only raise 9%
An interesting month awaits us