Local elections were held in all municipalities in

Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...

on 25 October 2015 (first round) and on 1 November 2015 (second round). Voters elected municipal mayors, village mayors and members of municipal councils of 265 municipalities. They were held alongside a referendum on the electoral code.

Controversy

The election campaign was accompanied by multiple scandals about vote-buying, voting tourists and arrests. On the election day, the election authorities in some polling stations did not provide ballots. After the first round, members of election officials were kept 48 hours locked in the election authority counting center at Arena Aremeec Hall.

Results

First round

GERB GERB, an acronym for Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (), is a conservative center-right populist political party which was the ruling party of Bulgaria during the periods between 2009–2013, 2014-2021, 2025-present and was suppor ...

, the opposition party won 34.5% of the vote and their incumbent mayors were reelected in Sofia, Burgas, Varna, Veliko Tarnov, Stara Zagora, Blagoevgrad and Haskovo. Second and third were the government parties the Bulgarian Socialist Party with 17.2% and the Right and Freedom Movement (the Turkish ethnic party) with 14.6%. The smaller parties from the opposition, the Reformist Block, ABV and the Patriot Front, got respectively 9%, 4.3% and 5.2%. The turnout of the first round was 53.6% which was 5% higher than 2011 local elections. GERB won 21 regional mayorships, the Reformist Bloc 3, 1 was won by a candidate backed by both. DPS also won 1 and an independent candidate won one.

Notes

References

{{Bulgarian elections

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2015 elections in Bulgaria October 2015 in Bulgaria November 2015 in Bulgaria