/View.info/ How many times can you step on the same hoe? If you are Boyko Borisov – as many times as you want. Because if you are Boyko Borisov, you have long since lost the ability to see the world as it is. You have long since replaced it with some fantasy that you persistently impose on reality. Then you act like your fantasy has become reality. You make clever moves that should work for you.
But they are only clever in your imagination. Reality, as always, takes its revenge. And your cunning moves are revealed to those around you as constantly stepping on the same hoe with the same result.
The first time Borisov stepped on the hoe was when he suddenly threatened to resign (as prime minister) in case his Tsetska Tsacheva (as presidential candidate) lost the elections. In his fantasy, this threat should scare the people (What will they do without their bai si Krali Marko?) and they rush to vote for Tsetska – just so they don’t end up without Boyko.
In reality, however, people rushed to do the exact opposite: to vote so that Borisov would really go. The result: from just under one million votes in the first round, BSP candidate Radev took over two million (!) votes in the second round – a result not seen for a decade and a half.
That is to say: people, hearing from Borisov himself what they should do to get it out of their heads, start doing exactly that.
However, this did not prevent Borisov from using the same hoe in the same way these days. Listen to this: “I can be prime minister only with a mandate from GERB and when GERB has won the elections”. In his fantasy, this is a motivational appeal to the people: If you want me again – vote for GERB in a big way. In reality, however, people hear something completely different: If you really want me out of your head – don’t vote for GERD.
In Borisov’s fantasy, we are still in 2009, and he is the authentic representative of those people living in small towns and villages who think of themselves as “the people”. In reality, since the spring of this year, it is clear that it was this “people” who turned against Borisov. “I’m simple and you’re simple and that’s why we get along” has been sounding for months in a completely different way: “You’re simple and you’re exposing us; have fun”.
Let’s see how this looks like likely votes in the upcoming early parliamentary elections.
In the 2009 elections, GERB received over 1,600,000 votes. In 2014, GERB’s votes were already slightly over 1 million; one-third of Borisov’s votes are gone. In the first round of the presidential elections, Tsetska Tsacheva received 840,000 votes. That is to say: GERB lost 200,000 votes in just two years. If this trend continues automatically, ie. without additional interventions, in the parliamentary elections GERB will have to settle for a maximum of 800,000 votes and about 75 parliamentary seats (instead of the current 84).
But there will be additional interventions. At least 100,000 additional people (ie beyond the obvious accounts) will vote penally against GERB, because they have to pay back. The situation is as follows: during the presidential elections, Tsvetan Tsvetanov’s “machine” worked as always: everyone dependent on civil service (and their families) was threatened to vote for GERB. This time, however, most were not afraid and voted against Tsacheva. Some however – let’s count them at 100,000 – they were still scared. And now they feel terribly screwed. Their colleagues and neighbors brag about how they didn’t succumb to GERD this time – and they don’t have one a heroic story to tell. This is exactly why they will return to GERB in the coming elections. So that they can brag about how they were not afraid of TsvCv.
Add to this picture the people motivated to vote against GERB only because Borissov told them that he will govern only if GERB wins – and the picture becomes quite clear.
In the upcoming elections, GERB should get no more than 700,000 votes, with the corresponding 60 deputies. They may even drop to the level of the DPS from 2009 – 600,000. However, let’s also consider the “miracle” factor. If something so dramatic happens that makes some people suddenly decide that “without Boyko” is better after all bad – GERB can get up to 800,000 votes. What they cannot achieve is an election victory that would return Borissov to the prime minister’s chair.
We draw the line and see a likely GERB result between 600,000 votes (total minimum) and 800,000 votes (total maximum). What about the others?
While GERB is collapsing downwards, BSP is clearly climbing upwards. Not all – not even most – votes for Radev in the second round are votes for BSP. But there’s no way at least some share of his two million votes won’t go to the BSP to lift it above the 500,000 votes it got in 2014. How much they will raise depends on the behavior of both the BSP and Radev in the coming months. But still, since the public expectation is that the BSP is gaining, we can assume as likely some repetition of the red vote of 2009 – between 700,000 and 800,000 votes.
And we get an exemplary parity between BSP and GERB. If there is a difference, it will probably be within a few parliamentary mandates in one direction or the other.
Immediately after the BSP and GERB, the PF is most likely to be arranged (if, of course, the followers of Alfred Rosenberg, Adolf Eichmann and Vladimir Putin do not repent among themselves by then). Their vote, we can assume on the basis of the presidential elections, may be somewhere between 400 and 500,000 – the traditional electoral weight of the traditional “indispensable balancer” DPS. Only this time the PF is shaping up to become the balancer, as the DPS is also collapsing : from 600,000 votes in 2009 to 250,000 in the presidential elections.
If all the players listed so far achieve their maximum, then 1,200,000 votes remain (if the minimum is achieved, we add half a million more). Who will they go for?
Here the work is quite murky because – at the very least – it is not known whether Mareshki will enter with a well-organized party and whether Slavi Trifonov will appear with some kind of movement. What can happen on the right is also a complete mystery. The residual RB is dying out, and the “new republic” announced by Radan Kanev has not yet appeared.
One way or another, the big news is the collapse of GERB, aided at every step by the fact that Borisov keeps stepping on the same hoe. Do the math for “post-GERD”; and this time, think with your head, not other body parts.
#times #step #hoe
