Voting For Bulgaria's Snap Parliamentary Elections '17 Begins

Polls opened in Bulgaria at 7am on March 26 for voting in the country's ahead-of-term election of a new Parliament.

These will be the country's tenth parliamentary elections since the start of democratic changes in 1989 and the fifth to be held before the legislature has served its full four-year term of office.

About 6.8 million Bulgarians were eligible to cast a ballot within the country and at polling stations in 70 foreign countries, to elect the 240 members of the unicameral legislature, the National Assembly.

The 240 members of the National Assembly are elected by open list proportional representation from 31 multi-member constituencies ranging in size from 4 to 16 seats. The electoral threshold is 4%.

Eighteen parties and nine coalitions are standing in the elections.

The term of the National Assembly is four years.

The elections are being held following Parliament's acceptance on November 16 2016 of the resignation of the second Boiko Borissov government, which had been in office since November 7 2014. A caretaker cabinet headed by Ognyan Gerdzhikov was given stewardship of the country on January 27 2017.