Sofia is electing its new mayor on Sunday. So are Vratsa and Pravets in the Northwest and Razlog in the Southwest.

Predictably, politicians, analysts and ordinary people have their attention focused on Sofia, where the mayor is believed to hold the fourth most important job in the land after the President, the Prime Minister and the head of Parliament.

The office in the capital fell vacant after the incumbent Boyko Borissov became Prime Minister when his GERB won the general elections in July. The hitherto mayor of Vratsa Totyu Mladenov became Minister of Labour and Social Policy in the Borissov Cabinet. Razlog's chief executive Lyuben Tatarski vacated office after being elected to Parliament on the GERB ticket, where he chairs the Regional Policy and Local Self-Government Committee. The previous mayor of Pravets, GERB's Krassimir Zhivkov, has been appointed Governor of Sofia Region.

Another three municipalities, two boroughs (in Sofia and Plovdiv) and 12 towns and villages across the country held mayoral by-elections on October 24.

The candidates

A total of 23 parties, coalitions and independent candidate nomination committees have registered candidates for the Sofia mayoral by-elections with the Municipal Electoral Commission.

18
candidates feature on the ballot paper:

Maya Grozdanova (Socialist Youth Union)
Hristo Atanassov (Libertas Bulgaria)
Iliya Bozhinov (Bulgarian Left Party)
Georgi Kadiev (Bulgarian Socialist Party)
Yordanka Fandakova (Citizens for European Development of
Bulgaria (GERB)
Valentin Simov (Greens Coalition)
Ivan Antikadjiev (Union of Free Democrats)
Anton Genov (Bulgarian Democratic Community)
Emil Antonov (Bulgarian National Radical Party)
Pavel Popov (Order, Lawfulness, Justice)
Tatyana Papazova (Bulgarian Workers' Party)
Kristian Krustev (Bulgarian Business Bloc)
Siyka Naydenova (Bulgarian Workers' Socialist Party)
Viktoria Dneva (Bulgarian Communist Party)
Ventsislav Kurpachev (Bulgarian Workers and Peasants Party)
Sava Gurbouzanov (United Pensioners' Party)
Georgi Zhekov (independent)
Teodor Dechev (independent)

The average age of the candidates is 52 years.

The voting

The polling stations on Election Day will open at 6 a.m. and will close at 7 p.m. or until there are people waiting to vote in front of the station. People will mark their choice of a mayor on a white ballot paper with the names of all candidates.

If none of the candidates gets more than half of the votes, the outcome will be decided in a second round, where voters will have to choose between the two strongest performers in the first round.

In Sofia, a total of 1,110,258 people are registered to vote in 1,409 polling stations on Sunday. Voting will also be possible in hospitals, social care homes, prisons and detention centres, if there are at least 30 voters with address of residence in Sofia.

The forecasts

Analysts are unanimous that voter turnout is the big issue in Sofia's by-elections. Most of them expect around 30 per cent of the registered voters to go to the polls. They mostly agree that the winner will be decided in the first round, but some do not rule out a runoff if the turnout is much lower than expected and the Socialist Party's electorate exercise their franchise in strength.

Surveys give GERB candidate Yordanka Fandakova a clear margin over her closest rival, Georgi Kadiev, supported by the Left.

A mid-October Alpha Research survey put turnout in the range of 30 to 35 per cent, which would give Fandakova a chance of winning about 52-53 per cent of the votes in the first round.
Kadiev is likely to win three times less, and support for the rest of the candidates will be even lower.

MBMD detects apathy among the electorate and warned that turnoutwould be low, even below 30 per cent. Fandakova enjoys high popularity indeed, but if turnout is very low and the Socialist Party followers are very active, there could be a second round of voting.

Mediana said that a turnout below certain levels could lead to surprises and paradoxical wins or losses.

Sova Harris analysts commented that these elections are overshadowed by the European elections and especially the national parliamentary elections in the summer and that attitudes have remained largely unchanged since then. It means that Fandakova is the odds-on favourite thanks to the support of her party and other right-wing forces.