Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Ggugi

Polling stations are open between 7am and 8pm on Sunday in Bulgaria, where over 6.8 million people are entitled to vote to elect Bulgaria’s 44th National Assembly.

A total of 45,701 Bulgarians living abroad have registered to take part in the vote, which will take place in 371 polling stations in 70 countries around the world.

Competing for the support of between 3.5 and 4 million Bulgarians expected to vote will be 20 parties and coalitions.

Nearly 4,000 observers from 22 national and six international non-governmental organizations have registered to monitor the election, while seven polling agencies will provide exit polls.

Voting in Bulgaria was declared compulsory by changes to the electoral code adopted in May 2016.

However, in February 2017 the Constitutional Court declared sanctioning non-voters anti-constitutional, which means that those who opt not to vote will face no consequences.

The expected outcome of the early vote, which comes after the minority coalition government, led by Boyko Borissov’s GERB, resigned in November 2016, remains unclear.

Pollsters foresee a neck-and-neck battle between the centre-right GERB of ex prime-minister Borissov and the centre-left Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP, led by Korneliya Ninova.

According to Alpha Research’s latest poll, revealed on Thursday, GERB remains the strongest force by a small margin, attracting the support of some 31.7 per cent of voters, as opposed to 29.1 per cent for the BSP.

The agency estimates that five or six parties have a chance of entering parliament.

Excluding the BSP and GERB, three parties look guaranteed to win seats: nationalist coalition United Patriots with nearly 9-per-cent support, the ethnic-Turkish dominated Movement for Rights and Freedoms, MRF, on 8.4 per cent and Volya [“Will”] – a new political project of Veselin Mareshki, a businessman, whose populist message is expected to attract around 7 per cent of the votes.

Another two coalitions – the centre-right Reformist Bloc-People’s Voice, and the centre-left Alternative for Bulgarian Revival, have a chance of crossing the 4-per-cent threshold to enter parliament, according to Alpha Research.

Gallup International Balkan gave the BSP a small lead over GERB in a poll on March 19, but on Thursday it estimated that 27.1 per cent of Bulgarians would support GERB as opposed to 26.5 per cent who will back the Socialists.

According to Gallup, five parties will get enough votes to enter parliament: the BSP, GERB, the United Patriots, MRF and Volya, while the Reformist Bloc-People’s Voice coalition stands just below the threshold.

Pollsters and analysts are reluctant to predict the winner of the election, noting that the tiny gap between GERB and the BSP could be put down to statistical errors.

Whichever party wins will need to form a coalition government of at least three or four parties – which means that forming a new cabinet could be a challenge.

The electoral campaign between February 24 and March 24 was marked by populist rhetoric on the part of the majority of parties.

Tensions between Bulgaria and Turkey escalated over the last weeks of the campaign, followed by blockades on Bulgaria’s border with Turkey staged by the United Patriots coalition on Tuesday and Friday.