Bulgaria's latest snap general election will not produce a regular government and will not put an end to the deep political crisis in the country, a poll carried out by Alpha Research showed on September 26.

Bulgaria will hold the early vote on October 27, after the June election failed to produced a ruling majority.

“Bulgarian voters enter the campaign tired and demotivated by the fruitlessness of the June elections and the increasing inability of party elites to be responsible and manage complex political situations,” Alpha Research noted.

61.6% of respondents said the current situation is “extremely disturbing with destabilisation and non-working institutions” and 53.8% do not expect that the political parties will manage to produce a regular government after the October vote.

Alpha Research noted that there was a sharp change in the position of most voters who expected a regular government to be formed after the previous two elections.

The increasing belief that politicians will again fail to form a government is also behind the expected record-low turnout – around 30% of voters versus around 34% in June.

61.8% of people believe that political formations must make compromises in order to form a government and stable ruling coalition and just 26.3% believe that no compromises should be made.

Alpha Research expects seven parties to enter parliament, with Gerb seen as winning the vote with 23.9%, followed by Change Continues-Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) with 14.4% and far-right pro-Russian Vazrazhdane with 14.2%.

“Although they retain a relatively high share of hardline sympathisers, all three political forces have a kind of glass ceiling that they cannot break. If the campaign does not lead to a sharp intensification, there is a high probability that each of them will lose votes in absolute numbers, respectively will have less trust and support by the society,” Alpha Research noted.

Meanwhile, the conflict between the two factions of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) is making the situation highly unpredictable. Alpha Research expects that the wing of DPS’s chairman of honour Ahmed Dogan, which registered for the vote as Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (APS), will get 7.9% of the votes, while the DPS-New Beginning – the faction of Delyan Peevski – will have 6.1%. However, as Peevski’s formation seems more active, these shares could change.

Two more formations are expected to enter parliament – a large left coalition formed by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) with 6.3%, one of the lowest results in the party’s history, as well as populist There Are Such People (ITN) with 5.4%.