Bulgarian PM’s party winning election: partial official results

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov’s centre-right GERB party is set to win most votes in a weekend parliamentary election, data from the central electoral commission showed on Monday, but may struggle to muster a majority.

With 25.6% of votes after two-thirds of ballots were counted, Borissov, 61, who has dominated Bulgarian politics for over a decade, will have the largest party in the next parliament.

But he could find it hard to build a coalition after anger over corruption weighed on his showing.

The new anti-establishment party There Is Such a People, of popular TV host and singer Slavi Trifonov, was running second with 18.3% of votes, followed by the opposition Socialists with 14.9%, data showed.

The anti-graft grouping Democratic Bulgaria and centre-left alliance Stand Up! Mafia Out!, which were behind massive anti-corruption protests seeking to topple Borissov last year, were on 10.3% and 5% percent respectively.

The ethnic Turkish MRF party had 9% of votes counted, while the nationalist VMRO, the current coalition partner of GERB, was at 3.6%, below the 4% threshold for parliamentary entry, according to the data for 67% of ballots counted.

Full official results are expected on Thursday.

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Source: Reuters