March 27 (SeeNews) - Centre-right GERB party won Sunday's early election in Bulgaria, but fell short of outright majority, according to preliminary results from the Central Election Commission (CEC) based on 98.5% of the votes counted.
GERB won of 32.64% of the vote against 27.12% for their main opponent, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), results indicated on Monday.
Besides BSP and GERB, three other political parties and coalitions passed the 4% threshold to enter parliament - the nationalist alliance Patriotic Front with 9.06%, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), which represents mainly ethnic Turks and Muslims backed by 9.04%, and Volya (Will) party, led by businessman Veselin Mareshki, which received 4.15% of the votes.
Four other coalitions remained below the threshold for entry in parliament. Right-wing Reformist Bloc was backed by 3.02%,
anti-corruption formation Yes, Bulgaria - by 2.91%, DOST movement representing mainly ethnic Turks - by 2.89% and right-wing New Republic - by 2.5%.
About 2.5% of the voters did not support any of the parties or coalitions that ran for the 240 seats in the National Assembly.
Voter turnout stood at 42.74% at 16:00 CET on Sunday, according to CEC. Polls closed at 19:00 CET on Sunday.
Sunday's early general election was held four months after the resignation of the minority coalition cabinet led by GERB. GERB's cabinet stepped down in November after the party's candidate in the presidential elections, Tsetska Tsacheva, lost to the Socialists-backed candidate Rumen Radev.