November 15 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's incumbent president Rumen Radev won 49.15% of the votes in Sunday's presidential elections and will face university professor Anastas Gerdzhikov in a runoff on November 21, preliminary official results showed on Monday.
Gerdzhikov came second in the presidential race with 22.28% backing, according to data by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) based on 60.95% of the votes counted.
Radev is supported by the Bulgarian Socialist Party and recently formed anti-graft parties We Continue the Change and Rise Up.BG. For his part, Gerdjikov has the support of the centre-right coalition of GERB and Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) led by former prime minister Boyko Borissov.
Mustafa Karadayi, the candidate of predominantly ethnic Turks' Movement for Rights and Freedoms, won 12.77% of the votes.
Kostadin Kostadinov, leader of the nationalist Revival party, received 4.01% support, followed by Lozan Panov, chairman of the Supreme Court of Cassation, with 3.37%.
Voter turnout stood at 25.72% by 4 p.m. local time on Sunday, four hours before polling stations closed, according to central electoral commission data.
Sunday's presidential elections were held simultaneously with elections for parliament, the country's third general vote this year.
We Continue The Change won 25.97% of the votes against 21.42% for the GERB-UDF coalition, according to CEC data based on 42.85% of the votes counted. Five other parties cross the 4% threshold for entry into parliament, the preliminary results showed.