Fresh Poll Gives 2.7% Edge to Bulgaria's GERB over Socialists

One day before the official start of the May 12 snap general elections campaign, pollster Kolio Kolev, from the Mediana agency gave a slight edge to the GERB party against the Socialists.

According to Kolev's latest results, if the vote was to be held now,  the formerly-ruling centrist Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria party, GERB, would be leading the left-wing Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP, by 2.7% of the vote.

"In football slang, this means one of the teams leads by 1:0, and referee just called for a penalty kick," the expert explained.

Speaking for TV7 Thursday, Kolev said unfortunately there were agencies that temper with the results when political parties ask them to conduct polls, instead of just being consultants.

He stressed Bulgaria needed to establish some sort of professional council to work on polling standards that would guarantee accuracy.

At the end of March, a scandal flared among Bulgarian pollsters over results, giving a huge lead to GERB (30%) against BSP (16%).

The data was released by the MBMD agency of sociology expert, Mira Radeva.

Kolev clashed with Radeva then, saying her data was of the type – "a woman said" – and informed from now on, Bulgarian sociology experts would ignore her and would never appear with her in the same broadcast.

He labeled the MBMD results a "lie."

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