Bulgaria Local Elections: Ivan Totev Reelected as Plovdiv Mayor after Close Race

Plovdiv's incumbent mayor Ivan Totev has won a second term in office, after a night of uncertainty as vote count suggested he and rival Slavcho Atanasov was running neck-to-neck.

With 100% of the voter protocols having been counted, Totev has 50.78% of ballots 1 lead of 1502 votes.

This has been the closest race in the run-off vote of Bulgaria's local elections held on Sunday.

After the first exit polls at 19:00 EET on Sunday suggested a clear lead (54.9%) for Totev, the gap with Atanasov, backed by the nationalist Patriotic Front coalition.

However, a parallel count by Alpha Research polling agency (which had initially reported Totev's victory) suggested Totev was only 0.4% ahead of Atanasov.

The vote in Bulgaria's second-largest city was particularly contested, with Atanasov and Totev having faced each other in the previous runoff in 2011, but also with the city being picked as a 2019 European Capital of Culture.

Atanasov had served as Mayor in the 2000s and got 45.1% after a relatively contested race in the first round of elections where none of the candidates in Plovdiv gained a majority.