We have witnessed mass silence, with the exception of compromising material against PP-DB, every day and on any topic.
This was stated to the Bulgarian National Radio by sociologist Marcela Abrasheva, regional managing director of "Kantar" for Southeast Europe.
"An interesting phenomenon is that PP-DB was at the root of the mass protests in December, and now it's as if it wasn't. The protest made it clear to everyone that the whole narrative, of which the PP-DB were almost the only exponents in the previous 12 months - that the state does not just have problems here and there, but has a fundamental problem in its governance model, which leads nowhere and which is highly corrupt, and this was a very clear sign that a fairly large part of the people think the same. It is not situational. This does not mean that these sentiments have disappeared. It all depends on whether this type of debate or statements will be active in the period around the elections.
According to her, even if the people on the lists of "Progressive Bulgaria" provoke all sorts of compromising material against them, it is unlikely that this will change the observation that "all possible compromising material - on any topic - is systematically directed at a single formation and that is PP-DB".
She pointed out that Rumen Radev's formation has mass sympathy because it is new and because he managed to position himself as the other - both in domestic politics and in geopolitical terms.
"Sociological data show that Radev takes more or less from all formations and the idea that his party will take votes from a certain formation is not very accurate. And in this sense, registering new things that could at least take away a little of this potential seems meaningful. "There are engineering projects and there is an effort, including from the status quo parties, to have additions that could help them in the electoral process," she commented in relation to the emergence of parties formed on the basis of civic causes that excite people, such as the formation of the father of 12-year-old Siyana, who lost her life in a car accident. According to Abrasheva, this type of search for public support has potential and will always have, but the question is how in the "well-defined and engineered Bulgarian political market such formations have a chance":
"And here again the question is whether behind an otherwise noble cause, understandable to everyone and something to which everyone can sympathize, there are not actually such supports".
In the words of Marcela Abrasheva, voter turnout is not like the level of the Danube River, it depends on us - whether we will show up to vote or not.
The hesitation about who to vote for, which respondents stated in sociological surveys, is a phenomenon of recent years, she explained and added:
"When voting for parties to a certain extent ceased to be as ideological as in the first 10 years of the transition, when other reasons appeared for a person to supports one party or another, the percentage of people who really hesitate and decide at the last moment has increased. They really are maybe 10-12%. So a significant part of people decide whether and on election day themselves decide who to vote for".